Why is hungarian similar to finnish

Ben Davis March 9, Why are Finnish and Hungarian similar? Are Sami and Hungarian related? What words do Finnish and Hungarian have in common? Is Hungarian harder than Finnish? Can a Finnish person understand Hungarian? What is the longest Finnish word? Is Hungarian close to Finnish? What language is closest to Finnish? What is often overlooked is how this mechanism serves as a major driving force for many cultural and linguistic differences among different human populations.

This article explores one such case: the divergence of Hungarian and Finnish. Also known as the Finno-Ugrian language family, the Uralic language family consists of thirty-eight living languages. Today, the number of speakers of each language varies immensely from thirty Votian to fourteen million Hungarian.

Linguists unite these diverse tongues with a hypothetical common ancestor called the Proto-Uralic language. This common ancestral language is posited to have originated in the Ural Mountains between 7, to 10, years ago. The origin of the modern Hungarian people is theorized to be the Magyars who resided in the dense forests on the Western side of the Ural Mountains.

For unknown reasons, they migrated to western Siberia at the beginning of the Christian era. There, they were vulnerable to the onslaught of military attacks by eastern armies such as the Huns. Later, the Magyars formed an alliance with the Turks and become a formidable military power that raided and fought throughout Europe.

From this alliance, many Turkish influences are evident in the Hungarian language even today. After being driven out by the Pechenegs in CE, the Magyar people searched for a new home, eventually settling on the outer slopes of Carpathians. Today, their descendants are the Hungarian people who still inhabit the Danube Valley.

There, this group split into two populations; one settled in what is now Estonia and the other moved northward to modern-day Finland. Through differences in region and over thousands of years, these languages diverged into unique languages, Finnish and Estonian. In the middle ages, Finland was under Swedish control, apparent from the significant Swedish influence present in the Finnish language today.

The diaspora of the Uralic language family has led to geographic isolation between members. In fact, there is a clear pattern in this language family between distance and language divergence. One of the most obvious examples of this drastic divergence is the relationship between Finnish and Hungarian. These two major branches split approximately 4, years ago, compared with Germanic languages, whose divergence commenced an estimated 2, years ago.

Hungarian and Finnish exist on the polar opposite ends of this language chain. Hungarian is even more isolated due to its people's history of conquering while traveling across Europe toward Hungary. These features happen to be closely related in both Finnish and Hungarian. Finally, I couldn't care less if Hungarians prefer being related to Turks, but people who claim something should take all facts into consideration and not just those which suit to them. Salla Koivisto, Guildford, Surrey, li65sk surrey.

Not all the so called Turkish "loan words" can be considered borrowed. Some fundamentals are never borrowed and point to a common, cognate linguistic connection.

Furthermore the relationship between Turkish ol to be and Hungarian volt is obvious. Same is true for the Hungarian verbal suffixes 1. Hungarian words like anya "mother" , apa, atya "father" Turkish ana, anne and ata. These were just some from the many simmilarities between Hungarian and Turkish. Zsebemben sok kicsi alma van. I have many little apples in my pocket. As a native Hungarian my point is that Hungarian is distantly related to Turkish, but I would not deny any distant relationship with Finnish either.

Erik Vail, Cluj, Romania I love how every answer on this forum, and indeed, the internet, relies on some or other preferred theory, which in Salla Koivisto's own words, "best suits them" that's rich. The fact of the matter is that whatever theory you choose to subscribe to, they are all just that - theories. I am no academic, nor am I a linguist, but I find it incredible how so many of the academic community online and elsewhere, can make final and conclusive claims about common ancestors between the Hungarians and the Finns, but in their next sentence they make extensive usage of such words as "might", "probably", "most likely", "presume" etc.

If you make a decisive statement about a widely debated topic, back it up with concrete evidence, not guesswork which is likely sprinkled with a healthy dose of personal bias. Finally, I couldn't care less what people like Salla Koivisto happen to think of I. Halasz's answer to the question.

If Salla is so convinced about the common ancestor to both Finnish and Hungarian languages, then why not expand on some of the other commonly named language similarities - e. Again, I am no linguist, but I do not subscribe to any one theory. Rather, I see that there are many theories around, and I do not necessarily think that the most commonly known one i. Finno-Ugrian , is the correct one. After all, there was once a time when people believed the earth to be flat. Tibor Szabo, Johannesburg, South Africa This is not an answer but a reminder: Sumerian and Sythia connection which has many words and solid grammar in common with Turkish.

Under time constrain I cannot write more. Djavid Mostame, edmonton Canada There are a lot of Turkish words loanwords in modern day Greek language. Does this prove that the two languages share a common ancestor? No, we all know where Greek came from. But it indicates that the two people lived together for a long of time.

I will presume that the same happened between Hungarian and Turcic. Anna Zinonos, Athens Greeece There can be innovations that completely change the structure of a language. Germanic invaders seemed to have introduced the concept of "The" into Latin - all Romance languages are neurotic about articles which simply didn't occur in old languages. That doesn't mean that Latin is related to proto-Germanic.

The relationship is because the amount of similar words is far higher than monosyllabic babbles that have similarities even as far away as China Baba v.