As an agglutinating language, Hungarian uses several suffixes to derive adjectives from nouns, verbs and other parts of speech. This post summarises the main suffixes. I will look in a future post at suffixes that form verbs and nouns. Hungarian has a pervasive system of vowel harmony. Leaving aside many details:- vowels are classified as…… Continue reading Derived adjectives in Hungarian
Tag: Hungarian
Use a free relative to avoid clumsy wording
I came across the following ugly sentence in The Times (on 9 June 2026, example 1, emphasis added): (1) The money is about double that which was paid to referees at the 2014 World Cup. The sentence is grammatically fine, but sounds very stilted. Much better is example 2: (2) The money is about double…… Continue reading Use a free relative to avoid clumsy wording
How do you say Magyar?
A few weeks ago, Hungary elected a new Prime Minister, Péter Magyar. Perhaps that is an instance of nominative determinism—his surname Magyar means ‘Hungarian’. The Hungarian word for ‘Hungary’ is Magyarország. English speakers sometimes use Magyar as semi-jocular synonym for Hungarian, but I have the impression that this has become less common in recent decades.…… Continue reading How do you say Magyar?
Hungarian and Finnish share more words than you might think
Hungarian and Finnish are both members of the Uralic family of languages but separated around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. https://languagemiscellany.com/2024/01/the-uralic-languages/ Some Hungarian and Finnish words still sound (and look) quite similar. Indeed, Hajdu (1975) points out that it is possible to construct complete (albeit artificial) sentences using words of similar form, for example: Kala…… Continue reading Hungarian and Finnish share more words than you might think
Where did Russian words come from (4)?
In earlier posts, I looked at 134 words that Russian inherited directly from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the presumed ancestor of the Indo-European family of languages: 27 adjectives, 3 adverbs and 5 numerals. https://languagemiscellany.com/2026/01/where-did-russian-words-come-from/ 43 verbs https://languagemiscellany.com/2026/02/where-did-russian-words-come-from-2/ 56 nouns https://languagemiscellany.com/2026/02/where-did-russian-words-come-from-3/ In this post, I cover 36 words not inherited by Russian directly from PIE but mostly inherited…… Continue reading Where did Russian words come from (4)?
Vowel harmony in case-marked forms of Hungarian personal pronouns
There is an oddity in how Hungarian vowel harmony works with personal pronouns. Many Hungarian suffixes undergo vowel harmony: when a case marker is suffixed to a noun, the suffix undergoes vowel harmony, but when a personal pronoun is suffixed to a case marking prefix, the prefix determines the vowel in the suffix. The same…… Continue reading Vowel harmony in case-marked forms of Hungarian personal pronouns
‘Based off’ again
I’ve commented before on people using the phrase “based off of” instead of the seemingly more logical “based on”. https://languagemiscellany.com/2022/08/what-is-this-like-based-on/ A recent (open access) paper in the journal English Language and Linguistics finds a rapid rise of based off (of) alongside based on and a similar recent increase in the use of off with 6 other verbs. The…… Continue reading ‘Based off’ again
Reflexives and reciprocals in English and German
There are several differences between English and German in how reflexive pronouns (such as themselves) work. This post discusses one such difference: referring to plural nouns, the German reflexive pronoun sich can also have a reciprocal meaning. In contrast, English has to express the reciprocal meaning using a different pronoun: each other (or its equivalent…… Continue reading Reflexives and reciprocals in English and German
Some World Atlases about languages
I’ve recently discovered 2 useful atlases, each devoted to a specific feature of languages: the World Atlas of Transitivity Pairs (WATP) the World Atlas of Classifier Languages (WACL) They provide more detail than is found in more general databases, such as the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (WALS), which I’ve mentioned in some other posts…… Continue reading Some World Atlases about languages
Museums of language and languages
Did you know there is a museum about language? Actually, there are several. There is a list of them in online book Language museums of the world, edited by Ottar Grepstad and published in 2018 by the Centre for Norwegian Language and Literature. https://languagemuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/Language-museums-of-the-World.pdf The oldest language museum in the world is the Ivar Aasen…… Continue reading Museums of language and languages