I read that Turkic languages have influenced Hungarian. I remarked in the word 'tessek' that it resembled 'tessekür ederim' a lot, but I couldn't really find other words which resembled Turkish. Except for the way the words sound, I can't really find any resemblance in a lot of vocabulary. Does anyone here know words which can be found both in Hungarian and Turkish or another Turkic language?

 

tessék (sic recte) means “please, help yourself”; teşekkür (sic recte) means “thanks”, so they are hardly the same in meaning. The latter, by the way, is from Arabic tašakkur.

 

Oh ok, I guess I remember them wrong. I thought they were related. Well, that means that I couldn't find any resemblance at all.

 

But does it exclude the Turkish origin?

 

I found a following list, but my knowledge of both Hungarian and Turkish is negligible, so I don’t know how correct this list is (I think that at least the word bika meaning ox or bull is of Slavic origin (byk or bik)
Horse riding: gyeplő
Tribal law, nomadic society: gyula, kündü, karcha, kapu, sereg, tábor, bilincs, törvény, tanú
People's Names: besenyő, nándor, böszörmény, káliz, bular (belár)
Religion, Belief world: báj, ige, igéz, boszorkány, ünnep, egyház, búcsú, gyón
Breeding: barom, ökör, bika, tinó, ünő, borjú, ürü, kos, kecske, disznó, ártány, tyúk, túró, író, köpű, ól, karám, vályú, komondor, kuvasz
Agriculture: arat, búza, árpa, őröl, ocsú, kölyű, eke, sarló, tarló, borsó, gyümölcs, alma, körte, som, dió, kökény, kender, csalán, tiló, csepű, orsó, szőlő, bor, seprő, csiger
Fishing: gyalom, vejsze, tok, süllő, gyertya
Birds: sólyom, keselyű, ölyv, turul, karvaly, tőr
Crafts: ács, szűcs
Transport: tengely, szál
Trading: bársony, gyöngy, bors, tár, szatócs
Natural environment: tenger, sár, szél
Wildlife: oroszlán, bölény, gödény, túzok, ürge, borz, bögöly
Flora:: gyertyán, kőris, katáng, kóró, gyékény, gyom, bojtorján, kökörcsin, üröm
Family: gyermek, kölyök, iker
Test and physical properties: térd, boka, gyomor, köldök, tar, csipa, szeplő
Property and equipment: sátor, cserge, karó, szék, teknő, bölcső, koporsó, balta
Clothing: süveg, saru, ködmön, csat, tükör
Verbs: gyűl, dől, szór, szűr, csavar, söpör, arat

 

Probably yes, because the original stem of the verb is "tet", and "-jék" is the suffix of subjunctive/imperative 3rd. pers. sg. So tet+jék becomes tessék and the literal meaning is "(que) guste", "(che) piaccia", "niech się podoba".

 

Köszönöm! Now I know (relatively) much more about Hungarian!

 

A considerable time ago I was interested in Hungarian and afterwards in Turkish. I found a lot of similarities between the two languages in grammar structures, but not in vocabulary. My assumption was that the Hungarian vocabulary did not have so many influences from outside languages, whereas Turkish vocabulary changed much from outside languages. This may be a cause why there are similarities in grammar structures whereas the vocabularies of the two languages differ.

 

Wikipedia gives the following distribution for the Hungarian language:

Uncertain: 30%
Finno-Ugric: 21%
Slavic: 20%
German: 11%
Turkic: 9,5%
Latin and Greek: 6%
Romance: 2,5%
Other: 1%

 

That's a whole lot of words of uncertain origin. Is there a list somewhere?

 

These percentages concern the vocabulary of Hungarian. Is there anywhere some reference to a similarity in grammar structures between Hungarian and Turkish? I found the similarities striking.

 

To what factors would someone attribute such an influence? To the Turkish conquests in Europe in the previous centuries perhaps? On the other hand, if we speak about similarities in grammar structures, then the subject is different.

 

As I said my knowledge of both Hungarian and Turkish is very little (I can make some simple sentences in Hungarian but not in Turkish), but I know following grammatical features that are common:
- agglutinative structures
- postpositions rather than prepositions
- suffixes marking possesion: his father= apja (H) babasi (T)
- vowel harmony.
You can read more about both languages in Wikipedia

 

No. The Turkic influence “happened” before the arrival of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin, when the Magyar tribes lived “together” with various Turkic tribes. Some words could be borrowed also during the Turkish conquest, of course, but this is statistically irrelevant. The Turkic loanwords in Hungarian are typically not from Turkish (language spoken in Turkey), but they come from various Turkic languages and, according to phonetical correspondencies, mostly from “Chuvash-like” languages.

Yes, the subject is different also because these similarities are present in other Uralic langages as well (including e.g. the Finnish that has not been exposed to Turkic/Turkish influence). These similaraties resulted in the theory of a possible Uralo-Altaic language family, but this theory is today rejected by most of the linguists for many serious reasons. However, these similarities cannot be expained “simply” by mutual influence, at least not during the last 3-5 (or even more) millenia.

Other sources may give different values, but (as far as I know) the differences are not too relevant. So, I think, these numbers can be considered approximately valid.

On the other hand, these statistical data reflect rather the origin of the word stems and not the whole existing lexicon of the language. From this point of view, the most “productive” words in Hungarian are those of Finno-Ugric origin as, according to various sources, more than 80% of the total lexicon of the modern Hungarian (including derived words, neologisms, compound words etc … ) seem to be of Finno-Ugric origin.

The great number of the words of uncertain origin is primarily due to the fact that the Hungarian is the oldest documented Uralic language (from the 10th century A.D.) and there are not enough ancient written documents in other Uralic languages to be compared with ...

Your assumption/observation is indeed valid to a great degree (especially for the last centuries), but not necessarily true for the origin of all the “historical" stems of the Hungarian language. Further details could be discussed in a separate (probably interesting) thread …

 

I agree with you . If we "simplify" a bit Ben Jamin's post #13, then we can speak practically (i.e. from the "Indo-European point of view") about two main common phenomena typical for both the Hungarian (Uralic) and the Turkish (Turkic/Altaic):

- Vocal harmony
- Agglutinative character

The postpositions and the suffixes marking possesion are "logical" (though not absolutely necessary) consequence of the agglutinative character of both the Turkish and Hungarian. On the other hand, the suffix pairs (or even triplets) -de/-da, -ban/-ben, -on/-en/-ön ... are "logical" consequence of the vocal harmony.

 

Right now I learn both Turkish and Hungarian and I recognize this. For me as a layman who is interested in linguistics, I would say that a far kinship between Hungarian and Turkish could be possible, but of course I don't know all the scientific theories about it, although I can see very striking resemblances in the grammar of the two languages.

 

These are typological similarities (agglutinative suffixing languages with vowel harmony) which you will find in Africa, Australia, Americas, everywhere. They do not prove genetic relationship.

 

I agree with francisgranada, a book of mine gives a completely different data:

15% unknown
18% uncertain or discussed
5% onomatopoeic
2% German
1% Latin
3% Slavic
2% ancient Turkish
54% Finno-Ugric

Yes, there's a whole list in my book. Do you want to puzzle out the etymology?

 

2% German? That's weird, because I came across a lot of words which looked German, but maybe that has to do with the a lot of basic vocabulary.For instance: 'Ház' looks like: 'Haus'. 'kopyahat' looks like 'kaufen'. 'mond-' looks like the German word 'Mund'.

By the way, what is onomatopoeic?

 

Mond is of Uralic origin, the -d at the end is an old frequentative formant (as in kérd, áld ...). The original Hung. stem is mon- (man- in Finnish, Samoyedic etc). For curiosity: if mondani (infinitive) were from Mund, then it should be *mundolni, as it is impossible to turn borrowed nouns into verbs without any suffix.

Ház is of Finno-Ugric origin and the similarity with Haus is accidental. Examples from other FU languages: kat, kud, kota. For curiosity: if ház were from Haus, then the accusative would probably be *házt and not házat, as this "a" is part of the original "full" stem (Finnish kota). And more, the German diphthong au would become probably ó in Hungarian, so the result should be rather *hóz than ház.

What is 'kopyahat' ?

 

I thought that I came across the word 'kopyahat' when I learned Hungarian, but I could be wrong. Your information is interesting, I always remember the word 'ház' thanks to the German word 'Haus'. Maybe I should obtain some linguistic-books, since I think it's very interesting how these changes are occuring in languages.

I need to look up again what the word exactly was, because it looked like 'kopyahat', but I can't remember exactly. It had to do something with the word 'to buy', but 'to buy' is 'megvesz' in Hungarian.

 

Perhaps, the word you are looking for is "kapható" (literally "receivable"), i.e. available or what you can get/receive/buy etc... e.g. in a shop. If so, then:

kapni - to get, receive ... (not to buy)
kaphatni - to be able to get, receive ....

The stem "kap" is of Hungarian origin.

 

How come that a lot of wordsseem to be similar to German? Did the ancient German tribes have contact with Finno-Ugric ones in some way and in that way achieved to have some similar basic vocabulary? I think there are actually a lot of coincidences, which makes me wonder if instead of coincidence the German tribes herited these words from Finno-Ugric tribes in some way.

 

No, no ... Kap and kaufen have totally different meanings, as well as Mund and mondani. Such "similarities" exist between whatever languages. E.g. who is in Hungarian ki, in Italian chi (prounced ki); boy is fiú (from Finno-Ugric *pi) and in Romanian son is fiu (from Lat. filius); to have is haben in German and habere in Latin (not cognates) etc ....

Applying the same logic you could also say that the English verb to say comes from the Hungarian száj (pron. sa:j) which means mouth ... This is exactly the same as Mund and mond !

 

Turkish and Hungarian are part of the same root language group of the Ural Altai language group. Of which Hungarian relates to the Ural aspect by origin of region being the Ural Mountains. Turkish is of the latter part of the group Altaic form the original Altay Mountain region. Much of this similarity and Turkish influence of Magyar came from the conquest of the region by the Turkic Hun Atilla and of course later the Ottomans..so you can find some trace similarities all through the Slavic world and even Scandinavian regions all from Turkic conquests. These are seen from Finland to Poland to Hungary. Although there are quite a bit of similarities in world, grammar the phonetic sounds are also similar.

Tesekkur is a frequently presented example..Tesekkur (Tesh'ek'koor) is Turkic by root with slight Arabic via Islamic influence. This word is only used by Turks and Afghans for thank you, no one else in the Middle East uses this word. The Arabic word for thank you is Shukran or Shook'ron. So you see some of slight influece.

Tessek in Hugarian is Please, help yourself...sure they are not exact translation equivalents but you dont to be genius to see the rooted practical similarities.

 

ubj: Turkish-Hungarian vocabulary comparison
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1993 21:08:25 -0800
Sender: Turkish Cultural Program List
From: Al Trh
To: Suleyman Sadi SEFEROGLU

The following is a list of basic Turkish words (mainly
verbs) and similar languages in the Hungarian language.

I compiled the list with assistance from the followers
of soc.culture.magyar.

AToprak

Here is the summary

---

Istanbul American Hungarian
Turkish English
------- ---------- -----------
ach open .........
ak flow .........
al take, buy .........
an remember, cite .........
as hang .........
at throw .........
az become furious, mad .........
bak look .........
bas step, press .........
bay make sbdy. pass out ba'j charm, cause faint
bich cut (grass, cloth) .........
bIch cut (wood, etc) .........
bil know bir have the power
bin mount, ride .........
bit grow (for plants) .........
bit end .........
boz spoil, break down .........
bo"l divide .........
bur wring,twist(helically).........
bu"k bend, twist .........
cay give up .........
chak strike together, nail .........
chal play (an instrument) .........
chal steal csal cheat
charp slap, hit, run into csap slap, hit, strike
chat fit together; build csat buckle
chek pull .........
chel trip (verb) .........
chim bathe .........
cho"k squat; collapse .........
cho"z untie .........
de say .........
del bore (a hole) .........
der collect .........
desh open up(a hole,wound) .........
dik erect; plant .........
dil slice .........
din end .........
diz put in order .........
dogh be born (i.e. child) .........
dogh rise (sun) .........
dol get filled tel fill, full
doy get full (stomach) .........
do"gh beat .........
do"k pour .........
dur stop .........
duy hear .........
du"r fold tu"r fold
ek plant (plants) .........
em suck emlo" tit, nipple

 

The Ural-Altaic family is a hypothesis, not an established fact.

This (if true) would weaken your argument that they are of the same family. By the way, it is doubtful whether the Huns were Turks.

Arabic tashakkur is infinitive stem V of the stem sh-k-r (elementary Arabic grammar). shukran is from the same stem.

 

I don't think there is much reason to not accept that they were Turks. Few of the surviving words were found in Chinese and analyzed by Talat Tekin and those are of Turkic origin. Also their political structure was distinctively Turkic.

The code name Attila is thought be İtilli (Turkish for "the one who is from Itil" ; the same as Itillian (as in Bulgarian or Hungarian). They are accepted as Ogur Turks (as opposed to their kindred Oghuz Turks). Magyars being known as Hungarians by many others is another hint since many think that "Hungar" is actually the word "On Ogur" itself. (Uyghur < Oy Ogur, Bulgar < Pol Ogur)

Hun in my opinion is the Proto-Turkic word ON (probably semantically related with the word "Khan") meaning "person of order" ~ "noble person" (as opposed to savage or barbarian).

ON also means white skinned, Western, lucky in Proto-Turkic.

When someone died an honorable death fighting, it was thought that this person grew in strength and value and reached a superior rank to become an OQ (arrow, fighter ~ think of it like the soul traveling like a bird (OQUÇ (arrow + fly,three,furthest) > kuş : bird) to Upper World like an arrow). That's probably how the word "UĞUR" meaning "LUCK" was formed. Also the words OGUR ~ OGHUZ (lucky ones) which over time started to mean "collection of tribes of fighters". I guess arrow and luck were logically associated with each other.

PS: Although I don't have any concrete evidence, I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augur might be related with "OQ, OGUR, OGHUZ" through PIE since Proto-Turkic *okɨ- (Turkish OKU) also means to read, recite, interpret. As a side note arrows (OQ) were used to tell the fortune by both Huns and many other Turks to determine which enemy to attack, which direction to go.. (I simply made the connection because augury is also related with birds and interpreting. The surprising thing is that I guess by coincidence, augur means "the one who recites, who talks, who interprets in Turkic languages). Of course this is my opinion since this this word is listed as having unknown orig

 

Thank you, very good feedback! I too do not understand a the urge to not accept the Turkic origin but such movements seems exist!?? Like the widely accepted Ural Altaic language group followed and adhered to for many years now trying to be dismantled anddismissed as a hypothesis? Thank you again.

 

Ancalimon, since you mentioned Wikipedia, please see the article on Hunnic language. Its linguistic classification is uncertain considering there are only three known words from the language!

 

Magyars are another Turanic people from Central Asia.

But actually majority of Turanic people was not Mongolian or Chinese oriented.

5000-6000 years ago Tarım Basin now at west China where Uygurs settled was a trade center and many migrators went there from Anatolia, Caucasia, so mixed there with natives. These people first emerged as Huns and than Turk. These were the people of SİLK ROAD.

Genetically from Anatolia to West China (Sycian-Uyghur) people have most commonly J2, R1b, R1a and G markers. ( Now and at known history, because no migration from west to Central Asia at last 1500-2000 years) C or K markers from Asia is so minority. These people commonly called as Turk or Turkic.

Because of starvation, or Mongols or China, sometimes these people migrated to west. Magyars are one of these tribes.

At 10 Century Arabian Historian El Bahri called Magyars as Turks. And meanwhile Byzantians call Magyars as Turks too. At 11. Century King 1. Geza called as, "Geza Brave King of Turkish Country" ‘ΓΕΩΒΙΤZΑC ΠΙΣΤΟC ΚΡΑΛΗC ΤΟΥΡΚΙΑC’ (Geōvitzas pistós králēs Tourkías) at his Byzantium made portrait.

Historical origin is the first connection between Magyars and Turks .

Second connetion is Kuman Turks, migrated to Hungary at middle ages.

Third connection is Ottomans.

Of course these affected on language.

 

"Kap" means, seize in Turkish. But it also means cup. It's written in a Turkish dictionary from 1070. But the word is orianted from Persian Language and also written in Tevrat.

 

Even more, if we add the noun úr (=lord/sir, señor, Herr ... in Hungarian) to tessék, we obtain an almost perfect correspondance/equivalence: teşekkür ~ tessékúr .

So as far as I understand, the Turkish teşekkür and the Hungarian tessék not only have different meanings (see fdb's post #2), but they have not a single consonant in common at the level of the respective etymological stems (see my post #6), i.e. tet- <> sh-k-r. Are these words really similar from the linguistic point of view? ...

P.S. The word tessékúr does not exist in Hungarian, it's my ad hoc invention for illustration purposes ...

 

Here are some similar words in Turkish and Hungarian


Turkish-Hungarian English
çok->sok many/much
ata->atya predecessor
ana->anya mother
ben->en I
benim->enyem mine
o->o she/he/it
kim->ki who
kimin->kié whose
de(ama,fakat)->de but
kapı->kapu door
sevgi->semmi love
sarı->sarga yellow
omuz->tamasz sholder
yer->ter place
uzun->hosszu long
kısa->kurta short
pis->piszkos dirty
kaplumbağa->teknosbeka (tekno = tekne yani kabuk) turtle
boğa->bika bull
öküz->ökör ox
tavuk->tyuk chicken
keçi->kecke goat
arslan->oroszlan lion
kuçu(köpek)->kuçu dog
koç->kos sheep
köpek->kopó dog
sakal->szakal beard
küçük->kicsi little
alma(elma)->alma apple
batur(cesur)->bator courageus
ikiz->iker twin
kapak->kupak tap
süz->szür refine
çadır->sator tent
kök->gyök root
bol->bo plentiful
yel->szel wind
kırbaç->korbacs whip
tekerlek->kerek (Macarca ve Mogolcada “teker” dönmek anlamına geliyor) wheel-teker Turkish ------- teker hungarian means steer
biş(çiş)->bis piss
baykus->bagoly owl
beter->beter (Macarcadaki anlamı “kötü”)öl->öl (macarca’da öldür anlamına geliyor) bad stuation
çal->csal (hile) cheat
çarp->csap ram-hit
dür->tür ---- roll
eşmek->es dig
sayı->szam number
sek->szök dry
yas->gyasz mourning
yoğur->gyur mix and ram
sür->suruség (firça) spread
süpür->söpör brush
süpürge->seprü broom
çevir->csavar roll
dalga->dagály wave
halk->hala people
saç->szor hair
cici->cici(meme) breast
kız+mak->kis+ál feel angry
kalpak->kalpag calpac
damga->támga label-sign
tanıt->tanít (öğretmek) introduce
tanık->tanú witness
daz->tar
tarak->taraj hair brush
tuğrul->turul goshawk
tümen->tömény division
pamuk->pamut cotton
yemiş->gyümölcs nut
yüksük->gyüszü thimble
cep->szeb pocket
var->van to be
biç->becs cut
erdem->erdem virtue
er->úr male
yurt->jurta tent-country
kılıç->kard sword

 

Some words seem to be obvious loans like tömény, jurta, korbacs, oroszlan (while "jurta" being most probably loaned directly from Mongol or Tatar, not throughTurkish). Some are discutable, and some are almost certainly only accidental similarity. There are also pairs tham almost certainly have nothing to do whith each other (like yemiş->gyümölcs, where gyümölcs means fruit in Hungarian, not nut, or hal that means fish, not people).

 

To discuss that you have to be educated about Turkish and Origins of Turks.

 

"There are also pairs tham almost certainly have nothing to do whith each other (like yemiş->gyümölcs, where gyümölcs means fruit in Hungarian, not nut"

This makes more strong connection. Yemiş also means fruit, especially fig in Turkish.

 

To discuss a common etymology you should give an explanation of how the words originated from a common ancestor. The first you do is to find out what earlier words and word stems they came from, and how they came to sound today as they do. A phonetical similarity alone proves nothing, and by the way, the phonetical similarity itself is dubious in many of your pairs (you would have to explain how the consonants and vowels changed to be what they are now). A very good example is the pair "'tessek' and 'tessekür", very well explained in earlier posts.

By the way, you don't have to have a PhD in old Turkic to discuss etymology. It is enough if you have access to both Turkish and Hungarian etymological dictionaries.

 

Dear Ben Jamin,

The issue is more complex than you expect.

For Example, the word tümen/tömeny comes from Mao-Tun-Mete-Metehan-Metin, he organized his army by 10 system and tümen means 10.000 soldier unit.
Mao-tun was leader of Asian Huns. For Turks, Turkic Countries and some Turkologists , he is Oghuz Han, epic leader of Turks.

 

I have corrected the above list.

 

Beter comes from Persian بدتر (bad+tar) bad+der = badder = worse.