Hungarian and language contact

Sampsa Holopainen

University of Helsinki

Uralic language contact

1.4.2018

sampsa.holopainen@helsinki.fi

Hungarian language

• Part of the Uralic (Finno-Ugric) family of languages

• Traditionally considered as a part of the Ugric branch of the family, together with Khanty and Mansi (= the Ob-Ugric languages)

• First written records of Hungarian words and names from the 9th century; sentences in 11th c. documents; first coherent text in Hungarian from the 13th c.

• The current geographical situation of Hungarian is due to early mediaeval migration (896), partly recorded in historical sources

• Ca. 15 million speakers (10 million in Hungary; large numbers also in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Austria, USA)

Hungarian language

Hungarian language

Hungarian language

• Proto-Hungarian/Ancient Hungarian:

• From 2000–1000 BCE (???) until the first written sources

• Old Hungarian

• From ca. 1000 (896) to 1526

• Middle Hungarian

• From 1526 to 1772

• Modern Hungarian

• From 1776

Loanwords in Hungarian

Loans into Proto-Ugric (?)

• Earliest Iranian loans acquired into Proto-Ugric (traditional view): loanwords with irregular cognates

• The idea of Turkic loanwords in Proto-Ugric disputed (Róna-Tas 1988; WOT)

• Loanwords between the individual Ugric languages? Hu tolvaj ’thief’ <- Proto-Mansi *tūlmāk (> Mansi N tūlmәx) ’thief, volwerine’ (< PU *sala- ’to steal’)

Iranian loans

• Several layers: earliest Indo-Iranian loans into Proto-Uralic, Proto-Ugric (?)

• 30–40 Iranian loanwords found only in Hungarian

• Old Iranian (?) loans

• Alanian (Ossetic-type) loanwords

• Persian loans (?)

Old and Middle Iranian loans

• tehén ’cow’ <- Iranian *daynu- ’cow’ (> Avestan daēnu-)

• tej ’milk’ <- ? Alanian, cf. Ossetic dæjyn) ’to suck (milk)’

• fej ’to milk’ ? <- Iranian *payHas- ’milk (noun)’ (> Avestan payas-)

• tíz ’ten’ <- Iranian*dasa- < PI*datsa-; problems with vocalism (why í?)

• Also the loans possibly acquired into Proto-Ugric are probably Old-Iranian type: Hu arany ’gold’ < PUg/PU *sirańa <- Iranian *zaranya-(Avestan zaranya-) < PII *ʒr Hanya- < *ghlh3-en-yo-

Alanian loans

• The biggest clearly identifiable layer of Iranian loans

• Also uncertain examples

• Alanian loans entered also Khanty, Mansi and Permic (independently)

• Contacts between Hungarians and Alanians north of the Caucasus in the 7th (?) century

• (Contacts between Hungarians and the mediaeval jász settlers in the Carpathian basis?)

• Most of the sources outdated: relatively good list of Alanian loans in WOT

Alanian loans: examples

• asszony ’lady’ <- (←*(a)χsina- > Ossetic æxsin, æxsijnæ ‘lady, mistress’

• kard ’sword’ <- Alanian *kard, cf. Ossetic kard ’knife’

• ? legény ’young man’ <- Alanian *läkwen, cf. Ossetic læg ‘man’, læqwæn ‘son’

• ? szeder ’blackberry’ <- Alanian, cf. Ossetic dzedïr ’blackberry’

Persian loans?

• Cultural words, not necessarily evidence of direct contact

• vár ’castle’ (cf. Middle Persian war ’shelter, enclosure’, vám ’customs’(cf. Middle Persian abām ’loan, debt’), vásár ’market’ (cf. Middle Persian wāzār)

• WOT explains most of these as Alanian loans

Permic loans

• A couple of words possibly borrowed from Proto-Permic into Hungarian

• ezüst ’silver’, cf. Komi ezis id.

• Can also be from Alanian, cf. Ossetic ævzist/ævzestæ ’silver’ (aboutwhich see Viredaz 2017)

Turkic loans

• The most imporant (?) loanword layer in Hungarian

• (At least) three layers of Turkic loans

• Hungarian lexikon plays an important role in reconstructing the prehistoric varieties of Turkic spoken in Eastern Europe (WOT)

• 1. Early Turkic loans before the settlement of 896 (Landnahme, honfoglalás)

• 2. Middle layer (Árpád-kori török jövevényszavak)

• 3. Loanwords from Ottoman Turkish (16th and 17th c.)

Turkic loans

• Earliest layer:

• Chuvash-type (Bolgar Turkic) donor language: rhotacism, lamdacism

• Hungarians part of Turkic tribal confederations

• Very intensive language contact, words for central concepts borrowed:

• ír ’to write’, gyertya ’candle’, ökör ’bull’, borjú ’calf’, bölcs ’wise’

Turkic loans: middle layer

• Pechenegs and Cumans settled in Hungary in the 13th century, assimilation by the early modern times

• Kipchak-type Turkic

• Limited number of loans

• koboz ’instrument’, kalauz ’guide’, komondor ’a dog-breed’

Turkic loans: Ottoman Turkish

• Cultural words borrowed from Turkish elite during the era of rule (1526–1683)

• papucs ’slippers’ <- papuç, zseb ’pocket’ <- cep, kávé ’coffee’ <-kefe ’brush’ <- kefe

Slavic loans

• Consists of several different layers (chronologically and areally)

• First loans acquired from East Slavic before the settlement in the Carbathian Basin

• Loans from South and West Slavic

• Important cultural words

• Earliest loans show reflexes of Slavic nasal-vowels (szent <- *svętŭ, munka<- *mǫka)

• Stress-rule in vowel-substitutions: ” accented vowel of a word in the source language governs whether a it ends up in Hungarian with frontvowel or (predominant) back-vowel harmony” (Hyllested 2014)

• Substrate-like influence

Slavic loans

• East, West, South: examples (Gerstner 2013)

• From Czech: csésze ’cup’, kuka ’trash-bin’

• From Polish: bekecs ’a kind of coat’, galuska ’a kind of food’

• From Slovak: boróka ’juniper’, bukta ’a pastry’, kacsa ’duck’, lekvár ’jam’ , pletyka’rumour’

• From Ukrainian: harisnya ’stocking’, kalamajka ’disorder’, zimankó ’bad weatherin winter’

• From Bulgarian: mostoha ’stepmother’, palota ’palace’, rozsda ’rust’, zarándok’pilgrimage’

• From Croatian or Serbian: bajnok ’champion’, csatorna ’channel’, csizma ’boot’, megye ’county’, paprika

• From Slovene: kúp ’cone’, malac ’piglet’, zabla ’piece of metal placed into horse’smouth’

Slavic loans

• Stress-rule (Helimski 1992)

• Examples (Hyllested 2014: 217–222)

• Hu ebéd ‘dinner’ (not †abéd) ← Late Common Slavic *obĕd

• Hu rosta ‘sifter, sieve’ (not †restö) ← LCS *rešeto, cf. Ru. rešetó id.

• Hu. szalonna ‘lard, bacon’ (not e.g. †szelönne) ← LCS *solnīná >

*slanīná ‘(salted) lard’

Doublets:

• Hu. csalad ‘family’ ~ cseled ‘domestic, servant’ ← LCS *čeljadь

Latin loans

• The contact situation rather different

• Reflexes of the prononciation of spoken mediaeval Latin (s, zs)

• Large numbers of religious vocabulary: templom, kápolna, oltár, angyal

• Terms relating to education: iskola, rektor, tábla

• Various cultural words: konvenció, patika ’apteekki’, zsálya ’salvia’

• Similar stress-rules in vowel-adaptation as with the Slavic and loans (Helimski 1992, Hyllested 2014)

Latin loans

• Stress-rule (Hyllested 2014)

• Hu fülemüle, fülemile ‘nightingale’ ← Lat. philomḗla

• Hu bazsalikom (not e.g. †bezselikem) ← Lat. basílicum

German loans

• An important layer, 500–600 words

• Contact started in the middle ages, intensive contact in the modern period

• Oldest loans from Bavarian

Romanian loanwords

• A relatively small layer

• More loans in dialects (esp. in csángó)

• Contacts between Hungarian and Romanian started in the 12th c. in the earliest

• áfonya ’blueberry’ (<- afin), palacsinta ’pancake’ (<- plăcintă), tokány’a kind of food’ (<- tocană)

Romani loans

• Few loans in standard Hungarian, more in slang

• csaj ’girl’, csávó ’guy’, kajál ’to eat’, manusz ’man’

Other loans

• French (already some loans in the mediaeval period)

• Italian

• Yiddish

• English

Loans from Hungarian into other languages

• gulyás, huszár, kocsi, paprika, puszta

• Hungarian loanwords in Slovak, Romanian, Serbian