What does Hungarian sound like to you?

[Magyar the Conqueror]

xL5wrNAgUvc

6fhh_wqwQzs

3_R64xboi54

Ignore context, good example of language imo (begining)
9BgCsXTuEEc

YkBe-2PhRBU

VzLhFYkJTIc

[Kanuni]

What does Hungarian sound like to you?

A Slovakian trying to speak Chinese.

[Didriksson]

Once a Polish person told me that Latvian sounds really similar to Hungarian. Ofc, two languages are not related, but Latvian has a strong Finnic influence, so maybe that is why he thought that both languages sound similar.

[Flintlocke]

Like Turkish mixed with Portuguese and totally non musical.

[Didriksson]

Btw, when I listened to a song in Hungarian I realized that when it is singed, I hear more similarities with Finnish and Estonian and both of them are considered as really melodic.

[Sikeliot]

Kind of like something halfway between Russian and Japanese.

[Didriksson]

It doesn't sound like Russian at all.

[Magyar the Conqueror]

I updated the OP with another video, does that still not sound melodic?

[rashka]

Sounds like German, Turkish and Romanian.

[Damião de Góis]

Like Turkish mixed with Portuguese and totally non musical.

I don't get anything, so no. To me it sounds similar to balkanian languages.

[Magyar the Conqueror]

I don't get anything, so no. To me it sounds similar to balkanian languages.

Does it really sound Slavic?

[derLowe]

xL5wrNAgUvc

6fhh_wqwQzs

3_R64xboi54

Ignore context, good example of language imo (begining)
9BgCsXTuEEc

YkBe-2PhRBU

VzLhFYkJTIc

It sounds very exotic. I cant pick up any words.

[derLowe]

Does it really sound Slavic?

It does not sound Slavic to me.

[Damião de Góis]

Does it really sound Slavic?

Yes it does to me, the sound of it i mean... but it probably has nothing to do with slavic. But i also don't know much about Slavic anyway, nor i'm used to listen to it.

[Didriksson]

It doesn't sound Slavic. ;)

[Styggnacke]

It sounds like a mix between Turkish and Finnish.

[Mordid]

To my ears, is sounds like a bit like Turkish and a bit Finnish, not at all like the Slavic languages that dominate Eastern Europe.

[Didriksson]

btw, how does Latvian sounds to your Hungarian ears:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnBsdfbH8Kk
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=AMERMWeDMQ0&feature=related

[Magyar the Conqueror]

btw, how does Latvian sounds to your Hungarian ears:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnBsdfbH8Kk
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=AMERMWeDMQ0&feature=related

It sounds more similar to Hungarian than the Slavic langauges do, but it sounds very different. And Latvian doesn't sound Slavic to me.

[Didriksson]

It sounds more similar to Hungarian than the Slavic langauges do, but it sounds very different. And Latvian doesn't sound Slavic to me.

As I wrote before, Latvian has a strong influence from Finnic languages, like Livonian and Estonia, our stress falls on the first syllable, exactly how it is in the Estonian and Finnish languages. And it just couldn't sound Slavic since Latvian is not Slavic. :) Thank you so much for the opinion and sorry for the OT question. :p

[Styggnacke]

IMO, it sounds like there are some phonetic similarities with Polish and Latvian. But I'm not linguist, this is just how I think it sounds.

[Styggnacke]

After a re-listening, I think that Latvian definitely sounds more Finnic than Polish.

[Magyar the Conqueror]

After a re-listening, I think that Latvian definitely sound more Finnic than Polish.

I agree, but after a re-listening, I also think Latvian had some German influence.

[Didriksson]

I agree, but after a re-listening, I also think Latvian had some German influence.

Yes, the majority of loan words come from the German language. During the Soviet times when Latvians went to Russia or any other Slavic speaking part of the Soviet Union, the natives always thought that Latvians are actually Germans speaking German. It's weird how differently our language is perceived.

[Magyar the Conqueror]

lj_fHPg-HHg

[Nixon]

German

[Guapo]

Like white guys trying to speak chinese.

[Magyar the Conqueror]

Anyone?

[RitinNair]

Sounds like a mix between Turkish and English.

[Harmonia]

It sounds..lovely. One of the most beautiful languages to my ear. Hmm..I guess it's just me, but it sounds a bit Germanic. Doesn't sound similar to Slavic languages at all.

[Onur]

Hungarian sounds like Turkish but in fact all the agglutinative Uralic/Altaic languages sounds pretty similar because there is a heavy suffix usage and most of the suffixes are quite same in all of it. I know that most suffixes are same in Hungarian and Turkish.

I recently saw a funny video on youtube. The lyrics of a turkish song with similar sounding hungarian words;
k11mUTYK0tQ



Like Turkish mixed with Portuguese and totally non musical.
Not at all, because it`s much easier to create a rhyme by using an agglutinative language with vowel harmony. For example, you need to find nouns which has same syllables in the end of each verse for creating musical rhymes in English but with Uralic/Altaic languages, you can easily use 100s of different suffixes of tense/mood to create ending rhymes. Also vowel harmony automatically creates a musical sound too.

[Harmonia]

Is it true that Csángó dialect is very close to old Hungarian? Is it used anywhere in Hungary nowadays?

[Magyar the Conqueror]

Is it true that Csángó dialect is very close to old Hungarian? Is it used anywhere in Hungary nowadays?

Yes its true, and most Csango live in Romania, specifically Moldavia.

[Siegfried]

Is it true that Csángó dialect is very close to old Hungarian? Is it used anywhere in Hungary nowadays?

My grandparents speak it.

From what I undrstand, when mainstream Hungarian was changing during the last hundred years (not by much though), this dialectt remained isolated on the other side of the mountains, and thus was not involved in that change. It's mutually intellegible with modern Hungarian as well.

It might be spoken by some Csango immigrants to Hungary, but no, it's mainly centred in Moldoca, and more specifically, Bacau (or Bako if you prefer) county.

[MandM]

sound like a mix with finnish and a soft turkish

[Magyar the Conqueror]

My grandparents speak it.

From what I undrstand, when mainstream Hungarian was changing during the last hundred years (not by much though), this dialectt remained isolated on the other side of the mountains, and thus was not involved in that change. It's mutually intellegible with modern Hungarian as well.

It might be spoken by some Csango immigrants to Hungary, but no, it's mainly centred in Moldoca, and more specifically, Bacau (or Bako if you prefer) county.


Hungarian as a language hasn't really changed that much over the years (compared to other languages), as you can see in HungAryan's thread. However it would be interesting to hear what Csango sounds like compared to modern Hungarian.

[Siegfried]

Hungarian as a language hasn't really changed that much over the years (compared to other languages), as you can see in HungAryan's thread. However it would be interesting to hear what Csango sounds like compared to modern Hungarian.

I know, it hasn't changed much, but where it did change, the Csango language did not. They sound a bit different, the two dialects, as should be normal. If I had any videos of my grandparents speaking, I would post them.

[Harmonia]

My grandparents speak it.

From what I undrstand, when mainstream Hungarian was changing during the last hundred years (not by much though), this dialectt remained isolated on the other side of the mountains, and thus was not involved in that change. It's mutually intellegible with modern Hungarian as well.

It might be spoken by some Csango immigrants to Hungary, but no, it's mainly centred in Moldoca, and more specifically, Bacau (or Bako if you prefer) county.

I've read that there are also Csángó dialect speaking people in Tolna county. I'm also interested in differences between this dialect and modern Hungarian.
I would actually like to learn modern Hungarian, but whenever I open grammar book, I look at it and close it, haha. Seems to be a very hard language to learn on your own.

[Onur]

Here are some more examples of the similarities between Turkish&Hungarian.

There is a popular sentence to indicate similarity between Hungarian and Turkish;

English; I have a lot of small yellow apples in my pocket

Turkish; Cebimde cok kucuk sari elma var

Hungarian; Zsebemben sok kicsi sarga alma van


If you don't believe, copy&paste these and translate to English in google :)

It`s a striking example and ofc the word order is same in both languages. Hungarians didn't adopt these words from us in Ottoman era but they adopted these words in era of the Hun Empire and/or Khazar Empire(4th to 9th century or earlier) because Ottoman Empire took control of Hungary at 16th century and it`s impossible that they learned these Turkish words for "apple, pocket" from us as late as 16th century. Also some grammatical suffixes and words like "who, whose, whom..." are similar too, so it cannot be 16th century borrowings. Also a lot of agriculture and horse riding terminology in current Hungarian language are Turkish words too.


Here are some suffixes;

English - Turkish - Hungarian
Whose book - Kimin kitabi - Kinek könyve
Who - Kim - Ki
Many - Cok - Sok
Little - kucuk - kicsi
With whom - Kiminle - Kivel

Apple - elma - alma
My apple - elma(m) - alma(m)
My apples - elma(larim) - alma(im)

http://member.melbpc.org.au/~tmajlath/turkic1.html

[superhorn]

Actually, many of the Turkic words in Hungarian come from other Turkic languages ,ones of the Kipchak group , and were added to its vocabulary before the Magyars arrived in what what is now Hungary in th elate 9th century .
Hungarian belongs to the Ugrian branch of Uralian, and its closest relatives are th eKhant and Mansi of Siberia.

[Onur]

Actually, many of the Turkic words in Hungarian come from other Turkic languages ,ones of the Kipchak group , and were added to its vocabulary before the Magyars arrived in what what is now Hungary in th elate 9th century.
Yes, thats true. They adopted some Turkish words during Ottoman reign but these are so few today. The 100s of common Turkish&Hungarian words comes from much earlier than Ottoman era and in fact, it was from the time when Turkic languages was more uniform. The divisions like Kypchak, Oghuz naturally formed later than that due to separation of the Turkic peoples.

Since you have Karaim relatives, i can give example about that from Hungary (today`s Romania). Khazars was present among the first Hungarians who came to central Europe but especially after Khazar empire was no more, many Turkic speaking Jewish Khazars has been dispersed into eastern and central Europe in 10-11th century and they brought their language and runic writing too;

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Alsoszentmihaly_rovas_felirat_fenykep.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Als%C3%B3szentmih%C3%A1ly_inscription

http://books.google.com/books?id=TyK8azCqC34C&pg=PA170&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Anusiya]

No offence, but I don't like it. It doesn't sound like anything nice to my ears.

[Siberian Cold Breeze]

Is that true ,fluent foreign Hungarian learners/ speakers are rewarded by Hungarian government?

[Antimage]

Here are some more examples of the similarities between Turkish&Hungarian.

There is a popular sentence to indicate similarity between Hungarian and Turkish;

English; I have a lot of small yellow apples in my pocket

Turkish; Cebimde cok kucuk sari elma var

Hungarian; Zsebemben sok kicsi sarga alma van


If you don't believe, copy&paste these and translate to English in google :)

It`s a striking example and ofc the word order is same in both languages. Hungarians didn't adopt these words from us in Ottoman era but they adopted these words in era of the Hun Empire and/or Khazar Empire(4th to 9th century or earlier) because Ottoman Empire took control of Hungary at 16th century and it`s impossible that they learned these Turkish words for "apple, pocket" from us as late as 16th century. Also some grammatical suffixes and words like "who, whose, whom..." are similar too, so it cannot be 16th century borrowings. Also a lot of agriculture and horse riding terminology in current Hungarian language are Turkish words too.


Here are some suffixes;

English - Turkish - Hungarian
Whose book - Kimin kitabi - Kinek könyve
Who - Kim - Ki
Many - Cok - Sok
Little - kucuk - kicsi
With whom - Kiminle - Kivel

Apple - elma - alma
My apple - elma(m) - alma(m)
My apples - elma(larim) - alma(im)

http://member.melbpc.org.au/~tmajlath/turkic1.html
that is a cherrypicked sentence.

if you compare a Turkish text to a hungarian one on the same topic,there are zero similarities(can try it on wikipedia). I don't understand a single word of written turkish let alone spoken. Stop trying to make it look like the 2 languages are similar, they are not. There are just as much similarities between hungarian and slavic languages.(actually, there are two times more slavic words in hungarian language than turkic,haha)

Turkish and hungarian doesn't even sound similar to each other(at least in my opinion). Maybe some people say they do,but that doesn't mean anything at all. Some people also say portuguese sounds like russian

[Voskos]

Sounds like Finnish

[Nero]

Just hungarian. I speak a little, it's a very unique language indeed. I know is kind closer to finnish, but I do not have contact with this one :p

[Rugevit]

Khanty language. Does it sound similar to Hungarian? : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwaGymP8Hn4&t=0m40s

[Vlach]

Khanty language. Does it sound similar to Hungarian? : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwaGymP8Hn4&t=0m40s

To me, not.

[Antimage]

Khanty language. Does it sound similar to Hungarian? : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwaGymP8Hn4&t=0m40s

to me it sounds similar to finnish.

[Rugevit]

to me it sounds similar to finnish.

It's difficult to find good examples of Khanty or Mansi language. Speech of modern day speakers is influenced by Russian. What about this Khanty song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmjYHN770n0&t=0m30s

[Antimage]

It's difficult to find good examples of Khanty or Mansi language. Speech of modern day speakers is influenced by Russian. What about this Khanty song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmjYHN770n0&t=0m30s

funny, but this song sound more russian to me than the guy's speech.But it also sounded finnic. I couldn't hear any resemblance to hungarian. In fact no language is really similar to hungarian.

COmparing khanti or finnish to hungarian is like comparing swedish to persian or german to hindi. Related,but extremely distant from each other and the similarities are insignificant.

[Rugevit]

funny, but this song sound more russian to me than the guy's speech. The speech didn't sound russian to me at all.

This song sounded less Russian to me than speech of the guy above.