Ask the Turk

In My Humble Opinion
61

The relationship between the Uralic and Altaic languages is controversial. Many linguists say they’re not actually related at all, but coincidentally share a large number of typological features. Shared vocabulary is mostly missing, however. A Finn could not understand a Hungarian unless she had studied the language specially. Finnish and Hungarian are not mutually intelligible, not even close. The relationship can be seen by comparative etymology, for example ‘water’ is vesi in Finnish and víz in Hungarian. In Turkish, water is su and in Mongolian us. Most of the words in Finnish and Hungarian are not this obviously related.

Finnish and Estonian are much closer. Hungarian has no close relatives at all. Hungarian separated from the rest of Finno-Ugric

The words for water, vesi and víz, come from Proto-Uralic *vetä. This may be related to Indo-European words for water like English water, Greek hudor, Hittite watar and Russian voda. There may be a distant relationship between Uralic and Indo-European. Proto-Altaic has not been reconstructed, and this raises doubts that Altaic really exists as a family.

62

What about Mansi and Khanty?

63

I forgot to finish that sentence before hitting submit. Here’s what I meant to say:

Hungarian has no close relatives at all. Hungarian separated from the rest of Ugric at about the 5th century BC. That’s a fairly long time for a language to stay isolated from its nearest relatives, and they have diverged greatly. Ugric separated from Proto-Finno-Ugric circa 2000 BC. Finno-Ugric separated from Proto-Uralic probably earlier than 4000 BC.

Those are the other Ugric languages and therefore Hungarian’s nearest relatives, but they have been sundered for so long that there is no mutual intelligibility, and unless one is a trained linguist it’s hard to even see the relationship. They’re not closely related like, say, Italian and Spanish. The Mansi word for water is wit, compare with Hungarian víz.

Compare the numbers from one to ten in Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Mansi, and Khanty:



1. yksi      üks     egy    akw      it
2. kaksi     kaks    kettő  kyt      kat
3. kolme     kolm    három  khurum   khulem
4. neljä     neli    négy   ñila     ñal
5. viisi     viis    öt     at       wet
6. kuusi     kuus    hat    khot     kut
7. seitsemän seitse  hét    sat      läwet
8. kahdeksän kaheksa nyolc  ñollow   ñil
9. yhdeksän  üheksa  kilenc ontellow jert’jang
10 kymmenen  kümme   tíz    low      jang

The numbers from one to six in Proto-Uralic are *ükte, *kakte, *kolm, *neljä, *vitte, *kutte.