János Kalmár
ABOUT THE HUNGARIAN LANGUAGE
“The most treasured possession of a people is its language. No matter what they lose, they can regain but if they lose their language, not even God can give it back.”
Géza Gárdonyi
1850:
The followers of SCHLÖZER, ZEUS, UDINGER, RÖSSLER, DÜMMLER etc. state that the origins of the Hungarian language should be researched in the territory of the Ural Mountains and Western Siberia north of the in the latitude of 50-55 degrees.
1871:
JÓZSEF BUDENZ regarded as ancient Hungarian words only those words that he identified as northern Turanian words and he called the non-existent people, who spoke this non-existent language, Finno-Ugric. He stated: “These wild, barbarian people, who had a very poor vocabulary, were forced to adopt many words, the meaning of which was unknown to them before the Magyar Conquest – from the Turks, Persians and especially from the Slavs.”
1880
JÁNOS ARANY, in one of his ironic poems called Orthológusokra wrote about the purposeful falsification by linguists:
Kisütik, hogy a magyar nyelv
Nincs, nem is lesz, nem is volt,
Ami új van benne, mind rossz,
Ami régi, az tót.
(Trans: The linguists state that there is no Hungarian language, there never was and never will be, whatever is new in it is bad, what is ancient is Slovak.)
1882
ÁRMIN VÁMBÉRY writes that the Hungarian language is of Turkish-Tartar origin, with Ugrian influences. Two thirds of the Hungarian vocabulary show close connections to the Turkish language. This proves without a doubt that the Hungarian vocabulary is closer to and shows greater relationship to the Turkish-Tartar than to the Finno-Ugric vocabulary.
1883
PÁL HUNFALVY called Vámbéry’s afore-mentioned language relationship “intellectual robbery”.
1953
ERIK MOLNÁR stated that the Hungarian language belonged among the Finno-Ugric languages.
1958
The newspaper, A libre Belgique (Free Belgium) stated that the Finnish Minister of Culture had formed a new branch of the ministry, whose responsibility was to prevent the spread of untrue facts about the Finnish people and the Finnish history. The first duty of this branch in Belgium was to ask the Belgian Minister of Culture to erase the mention of the Finn-Hungarian relationship, because the Finns denied any relationship to the Mongoloid Hungarians.
1962
PÉTER HAJDÚ wrote: “We do not acknowledge the existence of an ancient Finno-Ugric language because there is no trace of any written documents and all we can do, with the help of linguistics, is to try to reconstruct a hypothetical basic text in the Finno-Ugric language.”
What do foreigners state about the Hungarian language?
1480
MARCIO GALOTTI, a humanist in the court of King Mátyás Corvinus stated with amazement: “The Hungarians may be aristocrats or peasants but they all use the same language.”
1609
POLANUS AMANDUS, the humanist writer who lived in Basle, when Albert Molnár’s “Hungarian Grammar” was published, wrote: “There were some who doubted that the unbridled Hungarian language had any rules but you, in your outstanding work, have really disproved them.”
1790
JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER acknowledged that the Hungarian language is a great treasure: „Is there anything more dear to the people than their own language? Their whole way of thinking lies in their language, their past and their history, their beliefs, and the basis of their whole life, their whole heart and soul.”
1817
CARDINAL GIUSEPPE MEZZOFANTI, who understood 58 languages and spoke, among many of them, four dialects of Hungarian, greeted the Hungarian bailiff, József, in Bologna with a very spirited Hungarian speech. It was he who said to the Czech linguist, ÁGOSTON FRANKL: “Do you know which language is equal to Latin and Greek in its structure and rhythmic harmony? It is the Hungarian language. I am familiar with the new Hungarian poets, whose verses are completely mesmerizing. Let us watch the future, for the poetic genius will have a sudden upswing, which will prove my statement to be true. It seem as if the Hungarians themselves do not realize what a treasure is hidden in their language.” Cardinal Mezzofanti was made an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Science in 1832.
1820
JAKOB GRIMM established the rules for sound progression and was the first to write a German Grammar. He stated that the Hungarian language is logical, has a perfect structure and surpasses every other language.
1830
SIR JOHN BOWRING, English traveler and writer, visited Hungary and published an anthology in English of the work of Hungarian writers and poets. „The Hungarian language goes far back. It developed in a very peculiar manner and its structure reaches back to times when most of the now spoken European languages did not even exist. It is a language which developed steadily and firmly in itself, and in which there are logic and mathematics with the adaptability and malleability of strength and chords. The Englishman should be proud that his language indicates an epic of human history. One can show forth its origin; and all layers can be distinguished in it, which gathered together during contacts with different nations. Whereas the Hungarian language is like a rubble-stone, consisting of only one piece, on which the storms of time left not a scratch. It's not a calendar that adjusts to the changes of the ages. It needs no one, it doesn't borrow, does no huckstering, and doesn't give or take from anyone. This language is the oldest and most glorious monument of national sovereignty and mental independence. What scholars cannot solve, they ignore. In philology it's the same way as in archeology. The floors of the old Egyptian temples, which were made out of only one rock, can't be explained. No one knows where they came from, or from which mountain the wondrous mass was taken. How they were transported and lifted to the top of the temples. The genuineness of the Hungarian language is a phenomenon much more wondrous than this.”
1840
WILHELM SCHOTT, an outstanding German scientist: “ In the Hungarian language there is a fresh, childish, natural view and it cannot but be suspected that there is the possibility of development hidden in it like a bud. It contains many beautiful soft consonants and its vowels are more clearly pronounced than in German. It can be used for short statements and also for powerful oratory, in short, every type of prose. It is built on matching vowel sounds, pleasing rhymes, and its richness and resounding tones are well suited for poetry. This is demonstrated in every branch of poetry.”
1840
N. ERBESBERG, a world famous professor from Vienna: “The structure of the Hungarian language is such that it appears that linguists could have created it with the purpose of incorporating in it every rule, conciseness, melody and clarity and besides all this it avoided any commonness, difficulty in pronunciation and irregularities.”
1848
N. SIMPSON: “Letters from the Banks of the Danube.” In this series of articles, he wrote about the Hungarian language in the exciting days of March, (during the 1848 Hungarian Freedom Fight against the Hapsburgs). “The Hungarian language is very poetic, rich and spirited, . . . it is full of enthusiasm and strength and is suited to all kinds of poetical work. It is strong and yet gentle and very pleasing in sound. It is melodic and its expression is clear.”
1857
MÁTYÁS FLÓRIÁN, linguist and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Science, who was in correspondence with OPPERT, stated: “I gained from Oppert the treasure of the words (Sumerian) and called his attention to the fact that they resembled the words of the ancient Hungarian language.”
1860
JULES OPPERT emphasized the relationship of the Sumerian and Hungarian languages.
1860
The German linguists and professors at the Congress of Kiel announced that the only correct name for Mesopotamia’s Turanian ancient populace was “Sumerian”.
1870
ARCHIBALD SAYCE, Professor of Oriental Studies in Oxford, deciphered the first Sumerian one language text and gave a linguistic analysis of the language. He used comparative linguistics to study different branches of the language. In the course of his research, he examined the relationship of the languages of the entire Turanian language family with the Sumerian language. He found the closest relationship to Sumerian in the Hungarian and Basque languages. He went to Hungary to learn the Hungarian language and also found Hungarian to be the most useful language to read the Sumerian language.
1870
FRANÇOIS C. LENORMAND, the amazingly talented French linguist, stated: “The Sumerian language, not only in its vocabulary but also in its structure, is a Turanian language.” It is obvious that his work was very thorough because he studied the Hungarian historical phonetic linguistics and he studied the Halotti Beszéd, the Legend of St. Margaret and the Bible of the Hungarian Hussites.
1873
LENORMAND formulated the first Sumerian Grammar and also made a thorough comparative study of the grammar and vocabulary of the Ural-Altaic languages. By so doing, he proved the relationship between the Ural-Altaic languages and Sumerian.
1873
EDOUARD SAYOUS, a French historian proved the linguistic comparisons of Lenormand. In 1869 and 1896, he was in Hungary and he learned Hungarian. In acknowledgement of his work, he was made a member of the Hungarian Kisfaludy Literary Guild.
1875
FRANÇOIS C. LENORMAND strongly advocated that the language that discovered writing was most closely related to Hungarian. Therefore he traveled again to Hungary to learn the language more thoroughly. In his book “The Ancient Language of the Chaldeans and the Turanian Languages” from phonetics to the noun suffixes, almost entirely relying on the logic and pronunciation of the Hungarian language, he continued his research into the comparison between the Sumerian and the Turanian languages. He found that the Sumerian phonetic rules were based on the Hungarian.
1875
HEINRICH GELZER, a Swiss linguist, in an article entitled: Das Ausland, stated that the Sumerian noun and verb suffixes were identical to those of the Turanian languages.
1875
OSCAR PESCHEL, a German ethnographer, professor at the University of Leipzig, wrote: “The most ancient cuneiform writing was developed in the city of Ur, the so-called Sumerian-Akkadian writing. This ancient people was called Turanian.”
1876
DOPHUS RUGE, a German scholar, in his work: Die Turanien in Chaldäe, stated: “Now, among the Turanian peoples, a people of first-class culture has appeared – the Sumerians.”
1879
ZSÓFIA TORMA, archeologist and researcher, on the encouragement of Floris Rómer, in 1875, began archeological excavations on the banks of the Maros River in Tordos and its vicinity and found 10,387 artifacts with Sumerian characters. Among the 4,500 year-old ceramic shards, she found four with Szekler runic script. She suggested the possibility that the writings on the Tordos finds were connected to the Assyrian and Babylonian writings. She came to the conclusion that the ancient people of Babylon belonged to the Sumerian-Akkadian people who were a Turanian people.
1881
ERNEST DE SARZEC, a French researcher, discovered LAGAS, the first Sumerian city. In his excavations he discovered 40,000 clay tablets with cuneiform characters.
1883
Dr. ÁGOSTON HALÁSZ, Bishop of Kassa, in his study: Legújabb ősnyelv (The Newest Ancient Language) clearly follows the spread of human civilization from Sumer to Assyria, to the Hittite Empire and then to Greece. His conclusion was that the first pioneers in city dwelling were the Sumerians, who were identical to the Hungarians.
1887
Dr. SÁNDOR GIESSWEIN, a canon and linguist, to prove the Sumerian-Hungarian relationship, used anthropological examples and a thorough comparative study of the grammar of the two languages.
1. He demonstrated the similarity between the flexional endings of the Sumerian personal pronouns and the Hungarian objective conjugation.
2. Both languages are agglutinative.
3. The prepositional endings and affixes, in Sumerian and in the Ural-Altaic languages are eroded nouns.
4. The connection between the Sumerian and Ural-Altaic languages is that the simple suffix can express the noun-relationship.
5. A common characteristic of these languages is the use of the possessive suffix, to which additional connected suffixes can be added.
6. Obviously, the close relationship of more possessive suffixes in the Sumerian and Hungarian languages can be observed.
1896
Dr. K. A. HERMANN, Estonian researcher in the Russian Oriental Archeology Congress, in Riga, stated: “On the basis of linguistic conformity to rules and identity, my opinion is that the Sumerian language is related to the Ural-Altaic languages.”
1900
Dr. GYULA FERENCZY, University professor, in his work: A szumirok nemzetiségi és nyelvi hovatartozása (Where the Sumerian People and Language Belong), he stated the following: “From the facts that we already know, there is no doubt that the Sumerians are an ancient branch of the Turanian people.”
1913
JÁNOS GALGÓCZY, linguist, pointed out that both Hungarian and Sumerian possess the special subjective and objective conjugation.
1916
Dr. ZSIGMOND VARGA spoke fourteen languages. In 1920, on the basis of his book Ötezer év távlatából (From a Distance of Five Thousand Years), the Hungarian Academy of Science acknowledged the relationship between the Sumerian and the Ural-Altaic languages.
1926
JÓZSEF ACZÉL, linguist, in his book Szittya-görög eredetünk (Our Scythian-Greek Origins), stated:
It is a unique linguistic phenomenon that, in the whole world, apart from the classical Latin and Ancient Greek languages, only in Hungarian can poems be written in classical hexameter.
“In some of the Hungarian folk songs, the melody is so old that the Scythians may even have sung them accompanied by their ‘musikos.’”
1927
JULES ROMAINS, one of the greatest poets of modern France, when he visited Hungary, stated: “Because I did not understand the Hungarian language, I tried with all my strength to feel it. I felt that it was full of power; I know no other language that appears so masculine. It is a passionate masculine language.”
1932
EDGAR CLEMENT, German linguist, was so impressed by the musicality of the language that he learned Hungarian. According to him, the Hungarian language had a magical strength, which reflected a deep spirituality and only the highest ranking languages, especially the old classical languages could match up to it.
1939
GÉZA BÁRCZY, member of the Hungarian Academy of Science, discovered the 5000 year-old Sumerian suffixes and proved that they were identical to the Hungarian suffixes.
1940
Sir LEONARD WOOLLEY, English archeologist and linguist, excavated the Sumerian city, Ur of the Chaldees. He found 400,000 clay tablets, which were covered with linguistic material. He made a glossary and deciphered a large number of texts for the Institutum Biblicum in Rome, among them a six volume Sumerisches Lexicon, in which he deciphered 4,000 words.
1943
BÁLINT HÓMAN, historian: “According to our present knowledge, the Sumerian language belongs to the Caucasian Japhet language family. In the future, when we analyze the ancient Hungarian words of Caucasian and unknown origin, we should not disregard the Sumerian and Huttite-Hurrite language remains.
1948
RENÉ LABAT, Director of Studies at the École des Hautes-Études in Paris, developed a dictionary of Cuneiform signs that were numbered, for the use of his students.
1953
ANTON DEIMEL S. J., Principal of the Institutum Biblicum in Rome and editor of the Sumerisches Lexicon, in the letter which he wrote to Dr. Ida Bobula, stated: “I have not the slightest qualm about accepting the Hungarian-Sumerian relationship.”
1962
ÁRPÁD ORBÁN, researcher who followed the theory of probability introduced by Jószef Aczél, and developed the rules for the dating of the word relationships.
1963
VIKTOR PADÁNYI, historian, in his book entitled Dentumagyaria, examined the Sumerian-Hungarian vocabulary and, on the basis of phonetics and meaning, stated: “The spirit of the Sumerian and Hungarian languages, their structure and grammar are almost identical and, by this same measure, they differ from other languages.”
1966
JÁNOS HARMATTA, historian and academician, stated that, in 1961, N. Vlassa, an archeologist from Kolozsvár, discovered in Tatarlaka one round and one rectangular clay tablet, on which the signs could be easily deciphered with the help of Sumerian pictograms which they resembled.
1968
ANDRÁS ZAKAR, linguist and researcher in cultural history, demonstrated the language development on the basis of dating methods, and showed that in the Hungarian language, after 5000 years, out of one hundred words, 63 words were Sumerian and 12 Akkadian. This shows not only relationship but also direct descent. The newest scientific methods prove that the Sumerian-Hungarian linguistic analyses are based on certain historical and archeological evidence.
1970
IDA BOBULA, philosopher and historian, a researcher who spoke seven languages fluently, in her books Sumir rokonság (Sumerian Relationship) and A magyar nemzet eredete (The origin of the Hungarian People), and also in A 2000 magyar név sumir eredete (The Sumerian Origin of 2000 Hungarian Names) demonstrated that a majority of Hungarian names can be understood with the help of the Sumerian dictionary. In her analyses, she states that the returning Magyars brought with them a Scythian language, developed in Sumer.
1976
ADORJÁN MAGYAR: “The majority of the European peoples learned to read and write only after they were converted to Christianity, while the Magyars lost their own runic script after their conversion because the Church regarded it as pagan.”
1976
ELEMÉR NOVOTNY, linguistic researcher, in his book Sumir nyelv = Magyar nyelv, (Sumerian Language = Hungarian Language) published in Switzerland in 1976, convincingly proved that that a large part of the Sumerian vocabulary was identical to Hungarian. He presented the cuneiform tables of RENÉ LABAT, in which 13 Sumerian cuneiform signs could be understood and were identical to the Szekler runic script.
1976
DÉNES OSETZKY, researcher and engineer, came to the conclusion that: “Inasmuch as the Sumerian language elements in the Hungarian language are the result of the connections between the two peoples, the initial influence could be only such a group which anthropologically belonged to the ethnic type of the Homecoming Magyars.
1976
FERENC BADINY-JÓS, university professor, stated that the total number of cuneiform signs was approximately 4,800, but this did not include the words created from the cuneiform signs. He proved the Sumerian-Hungarian language identity with help of the 6000 year-old cuneiform tablets. He explained that the name of the Hungarians, HUN-GAR, just as the Asian name HUN, has been known for 5000 years and the name of the MAH-GAR people is now known as Sumerian.
1977
SÁNDOR CSŐKE, linguist, according to his final conclusions about the Hungarian language:
a) It is an original ancient language.
b) Its structure is entirely Hungarian.
c) Its vocabulary is 95% Hungarian.
1977
KÁLMÁN GOSZTONYI, professor at the St. Michael’s College in Paris, with the financial support of the French government, published his book: Összehasonlító szumir nyelvtan, (Comparative Sumerian Grammar) and stated that from 53 Sumerian grammatical characteristics, 51 are identical to the Hungarian, for example:
a) The adjective is singular, the noun is plural e.g. jó emberek
b) The interrogative pronouns and numerals can have a possessive suffix. E.g. Mi-d van? Az én tíz-em.
c) Nouns may be in singular or plural. E.g. kéz, kezek. Juh, juhok.
d) The same word can indicate both genders. E.g. ember, gyermek, testvér
e) An independent verb can create a sentence by itself. E.g. Fáj.
Besides the grammar, he presented, from the collection of cuneiform signs of Labat, Árpád Orbán’s new methods of dating and, with this, he examined 93 Sumerian words.
1980
BÉLA OLÁH, an independent researcher, in his book: Édes magyar nyelvünk szumir eredete,(The Sumerian Origin of our Sweet Hungarian Language) states the following identities:
1988
SÁNDOR FORRAI, professor and expert in scripts, in the collection of ceramic shards in the Museum of Kolozsvár, in which Zsófia Torma recognized four Szekler runic characters, found eight more and stated that, in Tatarlaka, N. Vlassa in 1961, excavated a round clay amulet, on which there were four segments containing script. Among the 10 characters, six of them were clearly recognizable as Magyar runic script and two more show a close resemblance. He traces the origin of the Magyar runic script to the writings found in Mesopotamia, which are 3,500 years old. It is not accidental that the linear script, developed from the pictographs, remained in the Hungarian script as runic script and has survived to the present, in spite of the fact that, in the course of a thousand years, from the 34 runic letters, the Hungarians had to adapt to the 24 Latin letters, which made it very difficult to express the double consonants.
1989
ISTVÁN ERDÉLYI, archeologist, in his book, Sumir rokonság (Sumerian Relationship), writes: “Among the Faculties of the Hungarian Universities, there should be a chair for Assyriology, which should also encompass Sumerology.”
1990
JÁNOS MAKKAY, archeologist, in his study, A tartariai leletek (The Tartarian Finds) states that the attempts to understand and decipher the Sumerian words themselves verify the Jamdet Nasr connections.
Bibliography:
Kalmár János – A Napfiai
A magyar nyelvről -- Hunnia 116