Hungarian (properly Magyar) is a branch of the Ural-Altaic family of lan guages to which belong the Samoyede, Mon golian, Tungusian, Turco-Tartaric and Finno Ugrian languages. It is classed in the Ugric branch of the northern division of the Turanian group and is most closely allied to the Ostiak, Vogulic and Mordvinic, and is also akin to the Turkish. Together with Finnish and Turkish it is one of the three non-Aryan languages that have taken root in Europe. The language of the Huns (from whom the name of Hungary is derived) is not known; neither do we know when they first appeared in Europe. They were conquered by the invading Magyars toward the end of the 9th century. Magyar differs from all the cultivated languages of Europe in inter nal structure and external form and is difficult to learn. Its origin' has been the subject of much speculation; philologists have sought its cradle in the Hebrew, Turkish and Slavonic tongues. An Hungarian monk in the 13th cen tury found a tribe called the Baskirs on the banks of the Kama in eastern Russia who spoke Magyar. An Hungarian astronomer visited the extreme northern coast of Norway in 1769 to observe the transit of Venus when he found that he was able to understand the Laplanders, which led him to write a book en titled Idioma Ungarorum et Lapponum idem esse,' a work that proved the origin of Magyar. But Leibnitz, who died half-a-century before, had already propounded a theory that the Finns, Lapps and Hungarians were related.
At the dawn of the 19th century Latin was the language of the scholar and the native tongue was held in disfavor. At that time the language of the people was inadequate to ex press the new ideas. A national movement began to stimulate literature, invent new words, and to substitute Magyar for Latin as the literary and political language of the country. By 1830 some 7,000 new words had been coined and added to the language; others have been added since, while not a few were borrowed from German and Slavonic languages.
Magyar is written in Latin letters (no W) ; by a system of accents, umlauts and combina tions, 15 vowels and 26 consonantal characters represent every sound in the language with in variable fidelity. As in the other Turanian languages the root is never obscured in words, whatever changes they undergo. Determining or modifying syllables are placed at the end, and have a double form, always taking a dif ferent vowel when attached to a sharp-vowel root from what they have when attached to a flat-vowel root—a general characteristic of the Turanian languages. .These suffixes represent the case-endings of nouns and the conjugations of verbs in other languages, and are very numerous. Hungarian has no diphthongs nor gutturals. At the beginning of a syllable the Hungarian never allows more than one conso nant; in foreign words which begin with two consonants, the consonants are made to go with different syllables by putting a vowel before them (for example, of :chola they make iskola), or a vowel is put between (as from krcil they make kindly). It also has no distinction of sex
whatever. ' No vowel is mute. Family names are considered as adjectives, from which they mostly originated, and hence are put before the baptismal name; for instance, Baton Gibor (Gabriel Mori), as if it were the Batorish Gabor, the Gabor of the Baton family. The perfect proportion between vowels and conso nants, the accurate shadowing and full articu lation which every syllable requires, and the fixed succession of vowels, give to the language a character of masculine harmony. The tonic accent or stress is always on the first syllable.
The preference given to Latin over the na tional language, not only in the Church, but in judical proceedings, legal documents and parliamentary debates prevailed until 1844. The use of a dead language in common life, as well as in all scientific subjects, could neither be advantageous to the general improvement of the people nor to the national literature. Though with the introduction of Christianity into Hungary the Latin language acquired the ascendency in the Church, in schools, in public affairs, parliament and courts, yet Magyar was used in commerce, in the streets and in camp, and even the resolutions of the diet were first drawn up in it and then translated into Latin. After a struggle which had continued almost without interruption since 1790, the Magyar lan guage was raised (1844) to the position to which it was entitled as that of a dominant nation.
Literature.— It is said that nationality is to the Hungarians a question of more absorbing interest than religion, and the truth of this assertion is reflected in almost every phase of their literature. Already their earliest poetical myths reveal the influence of national politics. Though the Magyars under Arpad conquered the Huns and their territory, they nevertheless adopted the Hun king, Attila, as their own ancestor and a national hero. Their own leg ends and traditions are interwoven with those of the Huns and form part of The Legend of the Occupation of the Fatherland,' the second great cycle of primitive Hungarian poetry. Af ter its conversion to Christianity (about the year 1000) under king Saint Stephen, churches, monasteries and schools sprang up in Hungary, but the earliest written memorial of the lan guage dates from the beginning of the 13th century, in the shape of a short funeral address. Of the two mighty forces that dominated the literature of Christendom during the Middle Ages— religion and the spirit of chivalry— only one, religion, is represented in the relics of Hungarian literature that have survived. Traditional sagas and prose legends inscribed on parchment still exist to bear witness to a high standard of literary culture at Hungarian courts and among the nobles and ecclesiastics during the 14th and 15th centuries. Earlier manuscript books exist containing legends of Saint Francis of Assissi; other documents re tail legends clustering around the national saints, the Amid kings, and especially Stephen.