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70-655: Southern Transdanubia ( Hungarian : Dél-Dunántúl ['deːl ˈdunaːntuːl] ) is a statistical ( NUTS 2) region of Hungary . It is part of the Transdanubia (NUTS 1) region. Southern Transdanubia includes the counties of Somogy , Tolna , and Baranya . Its capital and largest city is Pécs . It borders Croatia to the south, the Southern Great Plain NUTS 2 region to the east, the Central Transdanubia NUTS 2 region to

140-615: A Turkic language continued to be a matter of impassioned political controversy throughout the 18th and into the 19th centuries. During the latter half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian, or, alternatively, that both the Uralic and the Turkic families formed part of a superfamily of Ural–Altaic languages . Following an academic debate known as Az ugor-török háború ("the Ugric-Turkic war"),

210-417: A circumfix , to change a word's meaning and its grammatical function. Hungarian uses vowel harmony to attach suffixes to words. That means that most suffixes have two or three different forms, and the choice between them depends on the vowels of the head word. There are some minor and unpredictable exceptions to the rule. Nouns have 18 cases , which are formed regularly with suffixes. The nominative case

280-522: A derivative of Proto-Indo-European language *ar-yo- , meaning "one who assembles (skilfully)". In the Iranic languages spoken on the plateau, the gentilic is attested as a self-identifier, included in ancient inscriptions and the literature of the Avesta , and remains also in other Iranian ethnic names Alan ( Ossetian : Ир Ir ) and Iron ( Ирон ). When used as a linguistic term Iranian

350-707: A high proportion of words specific to agriculture and livestock are of Chuvash origin. A strong Chuvash influence was also apparent in Hungarian burial customs. The first written accounts of Hungarian date to the 10th century, such as mostly Hungarian personal names and place names in De Administrando Imperio , written in Greek by Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VII . No significant texts written in Old Hungarian script have survived, because

420-399: A millennium. These include tehén 'cow' (cf. Avestan daénu ); tíz 'ten' (cf. Avestan dasa ); tej 'milk' (cf. Persian dáje 'wet nurse'); and nád 'reed' (from late Middle Iranian ; cf. Middle Persian nāy and Modern Persian ney ). Archaeological evidence from present-day southern Bashkortostan confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between

490-812: A million additional people scattered in other parts of the world. For example, there are more than one hundred thousand Hungarian speakers in the Hungarian American community and 1.5 million with Hungarian ancestry in the United States . Hungarian is the official language of Hungary, and thus an official language of the European Union. Hungarian is also one of the official languages of Serbian province of Vojvodina and an official language of three municipalities in Slovenia : Hodoš , Dobrovnik and Lendava , along with Slovene . Hungarian

560-406: A process of nyelvújítás ( language revitalization ). Some words were shortened ( győzedelem > győzelem , 'victory' or 'triumph'); a number of dialectal words spread nationally ( e.g. , cselleng 'dawdle'); extinct words were reintroduced ( dísz , 'décor'); a wide range of expressions were coined using the various derivative suffixes; and some other, less frequently used methods of expanding

630-1069: A similarly dramatic way over these three centuries. After the arrival of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin , the language came into contact with a variety of speech communities , among them Slavic , Turkic , and German . Turkic loans from this period come mainly from the Pechenegs and Cumanians , who settled in Hungary during the 12th and 13th centuries: e.g. koboz " cobza " (cf. Turkish kopuz 'lute'); komondor "mop dog" (< * kumandur < Cuman ). Hungarian borrowed 20% of words from neighbouring Slavic languages : e.g. tégla 'brick'; mák 'poppy seed'; szerda 'Wednesday'; csütörtök 'Thursday'...; karácsony 'Christmas'. These languages in turn borrowed words from Hungarian: e.g. Serbo-Croatian ašov from Hungarian ásó 'spade'. About 1.6 percent of

700-513: A third-century inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam , with the accompanying Parthian inscription using the term Aryān , in reference to the Iranian peoples . The Middle-Iranian ērān and aryān are oblique plural forms of gentilic nouns ēr- (Middle Persian) and ary- (Parthian), both deriving from Proto-Iranian language *arya- (meaning " Aryan ", i.e. "of the Iranians"), recognized as

770-400: Is subject–verb–object (SVO). However, Hungarian is a topic-prominent language , and so has a word order that depends not only on syntax but also on the topic–comment structure of the sentence (for example, what aspect is assumed to be known and what is emphasized). A Hungarian sentence generally has the following order: topic, comment (or focus), verb and the rest. The topic shows that

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840-589: Is always on the first syllable of a word, as in Finnish and the neighbouring Slovak and Czech . There is a secondary stress on other syllables in compounds: viszontlátásra ("goodbye") is pronounced /ˈvisontˌlaːtaːʃrɒ/ . Elongated vowels in non-initial syllables may seem to be stressed to an English-speaker, as length and stress correlate in English. Hungarian is an agglutinative language . It uses various affixes , mainly suffixes but also some prefixes and

910-443: Is applied to any language which descends from the ancestral Proto-Iranian language . Some scholars such as John R. Perry prefer the term Iranic as the anthropological name for the linguistic family and ethnic groups of this category, and Iranian for anything about the modern country of Iran . He uses the same analogue as in differentiating German from Germanic or differentiating Turkish and Turkic . This use of

980-463: Is best attested in one of the three languages of the Behistun inscription, composed c.  520 BCE , and which is the last inscription (and only inscription of significant length) in which Old Persian is still grammatically correct. Later inscriptions are comparatively brief, and typically simply copies of words and phrases from earlier ones, often with grammatical errors, which suggests that by

1050-549: Is expressed by a possessive suffix on the possessed object, rather than the possessor as in English (Peter's apple becomes Péter almája , literally 'Peter apple-his'). Noun plurals are formed with –k ( az almák 'the apples'), but after a numeral, the singular is used ( két alma 'two apples', literally 'two apple'; not *két almák ). Unlike English, Hungarian uses case suffixes and nearly always postpositions instead of prepositions. There are two types of articles in Hungarian, definite and indefinite, which roughly correspond to

1120-408: Is indistinguishable from effects due to other causes). In addition to Old Persian and Avestan, which are the only directly attested Old Iranian languages, all Middle Iranian languages must have had a predecessor "Old Iranian" form of that language, and thus can all be said to have had an (at least hypothetical) "Old" form. Such hypothetical Old Iranian languages include Old Parthian . Additionally,

1190-442: Is marked with boldface. Hungarian has a four-tiered system for expressing levels of politeness. From highest to lowest: The four-tiered system has somewhat been eroded due to the recent expansion of " tegeződés " and " önözés ". Some anomalies emerged with the arrival of multinational companies who have addressed their customers in the te (least polite) form right from the beginning of their presence in Hungary. A typical example

1260-451: Is not known where that dialect (or dialects) was spoken either. Certain is only that Avestan (all forms) and Old Persian are distinct, and since Old Persian is "western", and Avestan was not Old Persian, Avestan acquired a default assignment to "eastern". Further confusing the issue is the introduction of a western Iranian substrate in later Avestan compositions and redactions undertaken at the centers of imperial power in western Iran (either in

1330-589: Is now frequently questioned. The name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian , and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove (sg. Ǫgrinŭ ) seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onoğur (which means ' ten arrows ' or ' ten tribes ' ). There are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and

1400-623: Is officially recognized as a minority or regional language in Austria , Croatia , Romania , Zakarpattia in Ukraine , and Slovakia . In Romania it is a recognized minority language used at local level in communes, towns and municipalities with an ethnic Hungarian population of over 20%. The dialects of Hungarian identified by Ethnologue are: Alföld, West Danube, Danube-Tisza, King's Pass Hungarian, Northeast Hungarian, Northwest Hungarian, Székely and West Hungarian. These dialects are, for

1470-581: Is only "Eastern Iranian" in the sense that it is not Western. The Iranian languages all descend from a common ancestor: Proto-Iranian , which itself evolved from Proto-Indo-Iranian . This ancestor language is speculated to have origins in Central Asia , and the Andronovo culture of the Bronze Age is suggested as a candidate for the common Indo-Iranian culture around 2000 BCE. The language

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1540-399: Is sometimes described as having free word order, different word orders are generally not interchangeable, and the neutral order is not always correct to use. The intonation is also different with different topic-comment structures. The topic usually has a rising intonation, the focus having a falling intonation. In the following examples, the topic is marked with italics, and the focus (comment)

1610-482: Is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer , which dates to the 1190s. Although the orthography of these early texts differed considerably from that used today, contemporary Hungarians can still understand a great deal of the reconstructed spoken language, despite changes in grammar and vocabulary. A more extensive body of Hungarian literature arose after 1300. The earliest known example of Hungarian religious poetry

1680-700: Is the 14th-century Lamentations of Mary . The first Bible translation was the Hussite Bible in the 1430s. The standard language lost its diphthongs , and several postpositions transformed into suffixes , including reá "onto" (the phrase utu rea "onto the way" found in the 1055 text would later become út ra ). There were also changes in the system of vowel harmony . At one time, Hungarian used six verb tenses , while today only two or three are used. In 1533, Kraków printer Benedek Komjáti published Letters of St. Paul in Hungarian (modern orthography: A Szent Pál levelei magyar nyelven ),

1750-532: Is the Swedish furniture shop IKEA , whose web site and other publications address the customers in te form. When a news site asked IKEA—using the te form—why they address their customers this way, IKEA's PR Manager explained in his answer—using the ön form—that their way of communication reflects IKEA's open-mindedness and the Swedish culture. However IKEA in France uses the polite ( vous ) form. Another example

1820-485: Is the communication of Yettel Hungary (earlier Telenor, a mobile network operator) towards its customers. Yettel chose to communicate towards business customers in the polite ön form while all other customers are addressed in the less polite te form. During the first early phase of Hungarian language reforms (late 18th and early 19th centuries) more than ten thousand words were coined, several thousand of which are still actively used today (see also Ferenc Kazinczy ,

1890-407: Is unmarked ( az alma 'the apple') and, for example, the accusative is marked with the suffix –t ( az almát '[I eat] the apple'). Half of the cases express a combination of the source-location-target and surface-inside-proximity ternary distinctions (three times three cases); there is a separate case ending – ból / –ből meaning a combination of source and insideness: 'from inside of'. Possession

1960-551: Is very archaic, and at roughly the same stage of development as Rigvedic Sanskrit . On the other hand, Younger Avestan is at about the same linguistic stage as Old Persian, but by virtue of its use as a sacred language retained its "old" characteristics long after the Old Iranian languages had yielded to their Middle Iranian stage. Unlike Old Persian, which has Middle Persian as its known successor, Avestan has no clearly identifiable Middle Iranian stage (the effect of Middle Iranian

2030-1193: The Achaemenid Empire ) and Old Avestan (the language of the Avesta ). Of the Middle Iranian languages, the better understood and recorded ones are Middle Persian (from the Sasanian Empire ), Parthian (from the Parthian Empire ), and Bactrian (from the Kushan and Hephthalite empires). As of 2000s , Ethnologue estimates that there are 86 languages in the group. Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The term Iran derives directly from Middle Persian Ērān , first attested in

2100-658: The Iranic languages , are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples , predominantly in the Iranian Plateau . The Iranian languages are grouped in three stages: Old Iranian (until 400 BCE), Middle Iranian (400 BCE – 900 CE) and New Iranian (since 900 CE). The two directly-attested Old Iranian languages are Old Persian (from

2170-619: The Mansi and Khanty languages of western Siberia ( Khanty–Mansia region of North Asia ), but it is no longer clear that it is a valid group. When the Samoyed languages were determined to be part of the family, it was thought at first that Finnic and Ugric (the most divergent branches within Finno-Ugric) were closer to each other than to the Samoyed branch of the family, but that

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2240-684: The Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin. In the 21st century, studies support an origin of the Uralic languages, including early Hungarian, in eastern or central Siberia , somewhere between the Ob and Yenisei rivers or near the Sayan mountains in the Russian – Mongolian border region. A 2019 study based on genetics, archaeology and linguistics, found that early Uralic speakers arrived in Europe from

2310-520: The United States and Canada ) and Israel . With 14 million speakers, it is the Uralic family's largest member by number of speakers. Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family . Linguistic connections between Hungarian and other Uralic languages were noticed in the 1670s, and the family itself was established in 1717. Hungarian has traditionally been assigned to the Ugric branch along with

2380-845: The Volga River and the Ural Mountains . The Onoğurs (and Bulgars ) later had a great influence on the language, especially between the 5th and 9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied (e.g. szó ' word ' , from Turkic ; and daru ' crane ' , from the related Permic languages ), and includes words borrowed from Oghur Turkic ; e.g. borjú ' calf ' (cf. Chuvash păru , părăv vs. Turkish buzağı ); dél 'noon; south' (cf. Chuvash tĕl vs. Turkish dial. düš ). Many words related to agriculture, state administration and even family relationships show evidence of such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in

2450-892: The 2011 Hungarian census, 9,896,333 people (99.6% of the total population) speak Hungarian, of whom 9,827,875 people (98.9%) speak it as a first language, while 68,458 people (0.7%) speak it as a second language . About 2.2 million speakers live in other areas that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before the Treaty of Trianon (1920). Of these, the largest group lives in Transylvania , the western half of present-day Romania , where there are approximately 1.25 million Hungarians . There are large Hungarian communities also in Slovakia , Serbia and Ukraine , and Hungarians can also be found in Austria , Croatia , and Slovenia , as well as about

2520-428: The 4th century BCE the transition from Old Persian to Middle Persian was already far advanced, but efforts were still being made to retain an "old" quality for official proclamations. The other directly attested Old Iranian dialects are the two forms of Avestan , which take their name from their use in the Avesta , the liturgical texts of indigenous Iranian religion that now goes by the name of Zoroastrianism but in

2590-464: The Avesta itself is simply known as vohu daena (later: behdin ). The language of the Avesta is subdivided into two dialects, conventionally known as "Old (or 'Gathic') Avestan", and "Younger Avestan". These terms, which date to the 19th century, are slightly misleading since 'Younger Avestan' is not only much younger than 'Old Avestan', but also from a different geographic region. The Old Avestan dialect

2660-610: The Eastern category. The two languages of the Western group were linguistically very close to each other, but quite distinct from their eastern counterparts. On the other hand, the Eastern group was an areal entity whose languages retained some similarity to Avestan. They were inscribed in various Aramaic -derived alphabets which had ultimately evolved from the Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic script , though Bactrian

2730-575: The Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, mainly based on work by the German linguist Josef Budenz . Hungarians did, in fact, absorb some Turkic influences during several centuries of cohabitation. The influence on Hungarians was mainly from the Turkic Oghur speakers such as Sabirs , Bulgars of Atil , Kabars and Khazars . The Oghur tribes are often connected with

2800-411: The Hungarian lexemes collected from technical texts, dialects etc. would total up to 1,000,000 words. Parts of the lexicon can be organized using word-bushes (see an example on the right). The words in these bushes share a common root, are related through inflection, derivation and compounding, and are usually broadly related in meaning. Middle Iranian The Iranian languages , also called

2870-534: The Hungarian language contains 75,000 words, and the Comprehensive Dictionary of Hungarian Language (to be published in 18 volumes in the next twenty years) is planned to contain 110,000 words. The default Hungarian lexicon is usually estimated to comprise 60,000 to 100,000 words. (Independently of specific languages, speakers actively use at most 10,000 to 20,000 words, with an average intellectual using 25,000 to 30,000 words. ) However, all

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2940-514: The Hungarians whose exoethnonym is usually derived from Onogurs (> (H)ungars), a Turkic tribal confederation . The similarity between customs of Hungarians and the Chuvash people , the only surviving member of the Oghur tribes, is visible. For example, the Hungarians appear to have learned animal husbandry techniques from the Oghur speaking Chuvash people (or historically Suvar people ), as

3010-452: The Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular. The traditional view holds that the Hungarian language diverged from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, in western Siberia east of the southern Urals . In Hungarian, Iranian loanwords date back to the time immediately following the breakup of Ugric and probably span well over

3080-446: The ancient speakers of Iranian languages. Of that variety of languages/dialects, direct evidence of only two has survived. These are: Indirectly attested Old Iranian languages are discussed below . Old Persian was an Old Iranian dialect as it was spoken in southwestern Iran (the modern-day province of Fars ) by the inhabitants of Parsa , Persia, or Persis who also gave their name to their region and language. Genuine Old Persian

3150-465: The east, specifically from eastern Siberia. Hungarian historian and archaeologist Gyula László claims that geological data from pollen analysis seems to contradict the placing of the ancient Hungarian homeland near the Urals. Today, the consensus among linguists is that Hungarian is a member of the Uralic family of languages. The classification of Hungarian as a Uralic/Finno-Ugric rather than

3220-630: The equivalents in English. Adjectives precede nouns ( a piros alma 'the red apple') and have three degrees: positive ( piros 'red'), comparative ( pirosabb 'redder') and superlative ( a legpirosabb 'the reddest'). If the noun takes the plural or a case, an attributive adjective is invariable: a piros almák 'the red apples'. However, a predicative adjective agrees with the noun: az almák piros ak 'the apples are red'. Adjectives by themselves can behave as nouns (and so can take case suffixes): Melyik almát kéred? – A piros at . 'Which apple would you like? – The red one'. The neutral word order

3290-409: The existence of unattested languages can sometimes be inferred from the impact they had on neighbouring languages. Such transfer is known to have occurred for Old Persian, which has (what is called) a " Median " substrate in some of its vocabulary. Also, foreign references to languages can also provide a hint to the existence of otherwise unattested languages, for example through toponyms/ethnonyms or in

3360-698: The far northwest; and the hypothetical "Old Parthian" (the Old Iranian ancestor of Parthian) in the near northwest, where original *dw > *b (paralleling the development of *ćw). What is known in Iranian linguistic history as the "Middle Iranian" era is thought to begin around the 4th century BCE lasting through the 9th century. Linguistically the Middle Iranian languages are conventionally classified into two main groups, Western and Eastern . The Western family includes Parthian ( Arsacid Pahlavi) and Middle Persian , while Bactrian , Sogdian , Khwarezmian , Saka , and Old Ossetic ( Scytho - Sarmatian ) fall under

3430-419: The first Hungarian-language book set in movable type . By the 17th century, the language already closely resembled its present-day form, although two of the past tenses remained in use. German, Italian and French loans also began to appear. Further Turkish words were borrowed during the period of Ottoman rule (1541 to 1699). In the 19th century, a group of writers, most notably Ferenc Kazinczy , spearheaded

3500-458: The following branches: According to modern scholarship, the Avestan languages are not considered to fall under these categories, and are instead sometimes classified as Central Iranian, since they diverged from Proto-Iranian before the east-west division rose to prominence. It has traditionally been viewed as Eastern Iranian; however, it lacks a large number of Eastern Iranian features and thus

3570-482: The language holds official status nationally in Hungary and regionally in Romania , Slovakia , Serbia , Austria and Slovenia . In 2014 The proportion of Transylvanian students studying Hungarian exceeded the proportion of Hungarian students, which shows that the effects of Romanianization are slowly getting reversed and regaining popularity. The Dictate of Trianon resulted in a high proportion of Hungarians in

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3640-436: The language were utilized. This movement produced more than ten thousand words, most of which are used actively today. The 19th and 20th centuries saw further standardization of the language, and differences between mutually comprehensible dialects gradually diminished. In 1920, Hungary signed the Treaty of Trianon , losing 71 percent of its territory and one-third of the ethnic Hungarian population along with it. Today,

3710-489: The leading figure of the Hungarian language reforms.) Kazinczy's chief goal was to replace existing words of German and Latin origins with newly created Hungarian words. As a result, Kazinczy and his later followers (the reformers) significantly reduced the formerly high ratio of words of Latin and German origins in the Hungarian language, which were related to social sciences, natural sciences, politics and economics, institutional names, fashion etc. Giving an accurate estimate for

3780-448: The medium of writing used at the time, wood, is perishable. The Kingdom of Hungary was founded in 1000 by Stephen I . The country became a Western -styled Christian ( Roman Catholic ) state, with Latin script replacing Hungarian runes . The earliest remaining fragments of the language are found in the establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany from 1055, intermingled with Latin text. The first extant text fully written in Hungarian

3850-574: The most part, mutually intelligible . The Hungarian Csángó dialect, which is mentioned but not listed separately by Ethnologue, is spoken primarily in Bacău County in eastern Romania. The Csángó Hungarian group has been largely isolated from other Hungarian people , and therefore preserved features that closely resemble earlier forms of Hungarian. Hungarian has 14 vowel phonemes and 25 consonant phonemes. The vowel phonemes can be grouped as pairs of short and long vowels such as o and ó . Most of

3920-553: The name of the country, " Magyarország " (Hungary), pronounced /ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ/ . It is one of three palatal consonants, the others being ⟨ty⟩ and ⟨ny⟩ . Historically a fourth palatalized consonant ʎ existed, still written ⟨ly⟩ . A single 'r' is pronounced as an alveolar tap ( akkora 'of that size'), but a double 'r' is pronounced as an alveolar trill ( akkorra 'by that time'), like in Spanish and Italian . Primary stress

3990-407: The new information for the listeners that may not have been known or that their knowledge must be corrected. For example, "Én vagyok az apád". ('I am your father'. Literally, 'It is I who am your father'.), from the movie The Empire Strikes Back , the pronoun I ( én ) is in the focus and implies that it is new information, and the listener thought that someone else is his father. Although Hungarian

4060-559: The north, and the Western Transdanubia NUTS 2 region to the north-west. 46°04′15″N 18°13′59″E  /  46.07083°N 18.23306°E  / 46.07083; 18.23306 This Hungarian geography article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Hungarian language It is also spoken by Hungarian diaspora communities worldwide, especially in North America (particularly

4130-443: The other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian /aː/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, and Hungarian /h/ corresponds to Khanty /x/ , while Hungarian final /z/ corresponds to Khanty final /t/ . For example, Hungarian ház [haːz] ' house ' vs. Khanty xot [xot] ' house ' , and Hungarian száz [saːz] ' hundred ' vs. Khanty sot [sot] ' hundred ' . The distance between

4200-485: The pairs have an almost similar pronunciation and vary significantly only in their duration. However, pairs a / á and e / é differ both in closedness and length. Consonant length is also distinctive in Hungarian. Most consonant phonemes can occur as geminates . The sound voiced palatal plosive /ɟ/ , written ⟨gy⟩ , sounds similar to 'd' in British English 'duty'. It occurs in

4270-411: The proposition is only for that particular thing or aspect, and it implies that the proposition is not true for some others. For example, in " Az almát János látja". ('It is John who sees the apple'. Literally 'The apple John sees.'), the apple is in the topic, implying that other objects may be seen by not him but other people (the pear may be seen by Peter). The topic part may be empty. The focus shows

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4340-517: The reconstructed linguistic relationships of common Indo-European. Proto-Iranian thus dates to some time after the Proto-Indo-Iranian breakup, or the early-2nd millennium BCE, as the Old Iranian languages began to break off and evolve separately as the various Iranian tribes migrated and settled in vast areas of southeastern Europe , the Iranian Plateau , and Central Asia. Proto-Iranian innovations compared to Proto-Indo-Iranian include:

4410-472: The recording of vocabulary, as Herodotus did for what he called " Scythian " and in one instance, Median ( σπάκα "dog"). Conventionally, Iranian languages are grouped into "western" and "eastern" branches. These terms have little meaning with respect to Old Avestan as that stage of the language may predate the settling of the Iranian peoples into western and eastern groups. The geographic terms also have little meaning when applied to Younger Avestan since it

4480-550: The south-west in Persia, or in the north-west in Nisa/Parthia and Ecbatana/Media). Two of the earliest dialectal divisions among Iranian indeed happen to not follow the later division into Western and Eastern blocks. These concern the fate of the Proto-Indo-Iranian first-series palatal consonants, *ć and *dź: As a common intermediate stage, it is possible to reconstruct depalatalized affricates: *c, *dz. (This coincides with

4550-454: The state of affairs in the neighboring Nuristani languages .) A further complication however concerns the consonant clusters *ćw and *dźw: A division of Iranian languages in at least three groups during the Old Iranian period is thus implied: It is possible that other distinct dialect groups were already in existence during this period. Good candidates are the hypothetical ancestor languages of Alanian/Scytho-Sarmatian subgroup of Scythian in

4620-414: The surrounding 7 countries, so it is widely spoken or understood. Although host countries are not always considerate of Hungarian language users, communities are strong. The Szeklers , for example, form their own region and have their own national museum, educational institutions, and hospitals. Hungarian has about 13 million native speakers, of whom more than 9.8 million live in Hungary. According to

4690-403: The term for the Iranian language family was introduced in 1836 by Christian Lassen . Robert Needham Cust used the term Irano-Aryan in 1878, and Orientalists such as George Abraham Grierson and Max Müller contrasted Irano-Aryan ( Iranian ) and Indo-Aryan ( Indic ). Some recent scholarship, primarily in German, has revived this convention. The Iranian languages are divided into

4760-517: The total word count is difficult, since it is hard to define a "word" in agglutinating languages, due to the existence of affixed words and compound words. To obtain a meaningful definition of compound words, it is necessary to exclude compounds whose meaning is the mere sum of its elements. The largest dictionaries giving translations from Hungarian to another language contain 120,000 words and phrases (but this may include redundant phrases as well, because of translation issues) . The new desk lexicon of

4830-506: The turning of sibilant fricative *s into non-sibilant fricative glottal *h; the voiced aspirated plosives *bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ yielding to the voiced unaspirated plosives *b, *d, *g resp.; the voiceless unaspirated stops *p, *t, *k before another consonant changing into fricatives *f, *θ, *x resp.; voiceless aspirated stops *pʰ, *tʰ, *kʰ turning into fricatives *f, *θ, *x, resp. The multitude of Middle Iranian languages and peoples indicate that great linguistic diversity must have existed among

4900-609: Was situated precisely in the western part of Central Asia that borders present-day Russia and Kazakhstan . It was thus in relative proximity to the other satem ethno-linguistic groups of the Indo-European family , such as Thracian , Balto-Slavic and others, and to common Indo-European's original homeland (more precisely, the Pontic-Caspian Steppe to the north of the Black Sea and the Caucasus ), according to

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