Origins

The Hungarian language belongs to the Uralic linguistic family, in the Ugric branch of Finno-Ugric languages. Its history can be traced back to 1000 BC. It has, consequently, common features with other Ugric languages and also somewhat with Finnish. It suffered the strong impact of its neighbor languages during various stages of its development, the most significant of which are Turkish, Latin and Slavic languages, and to some extent, German.

Official Language

Hungarian is the official tongue for Hungary, and after its accession to the European Union, it became an EU official language. It’s also official at a regional level in Slovenia, Serbia and Austria. Some municipalities and localities in Romania, Ukraine, Croatia and Slovakia also have it as an official language alongside others.

Varieties

The classification of Hungarian dialects detects the following major language varieties: Alföld, West Danube, Danube-Tisza, King's Pass Hungarian, Northeast Hungarian, Northwest Hungarian, Székely, West Hungarian. All of the enumerated dialects are mutually intelligible. The Csángó dialect is spoken mainly in the Romanian area of Bacău, and marks more significant differences than other dialects, due to its long isolation.

Brief History

The Hungarian language has a long history, which is hard to trace back to the exact beginning. Some have found roots beginning around 3,000 years ago. Depending on the way of living of the Hungarians, settled or nomadic, it had a different geographical area of distribution and development. The first language to have a strong influence on Hungarian was Turkish. Many vocabulary and grammar phenomena are still recognizably of Turkish origin.

With the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary by Stephen I in Europe, Hungarian started its clearly separate development. From that time on, the exclusive impact upon the evolution of the language was reserved for Latin. Hungary was a Christian Kingdom in Europe, and as such it largely used Latin. The influence was so great that Hungarian only gained its official status over Latin in 1844.

During its European development, Hungarian has also been influenced by Slavic languages, as it’s situated in a border area between Eastern (mostly Slavic) and Western Europe. It also suffered the influence of German.

Did you know?

Hungarian doesn’t belong to the family of Indo-European languages, but is classified within the Uralic languages (Finno-Ugric). It has quite a long history, traced back to about 3,000 years ago. Hungarians changed their place of living as well as their way of life until they established the Kingdom of Hungary in Europe in the 10th Century.

Despite the fact that most people in Europe use English for work and communication, Hungarians do so at a lesser degree. It’s easier to find a German or Russian speaking Hungarian on the street than someone who will tell you where the post office is in English.