Why does the Finnish language resemble Hungarian more than German (in contrast to Swedish and Norwegian)? Did Finnish influence Hungarian (or the reverse), or did they have an ancestor in common?
thanks in advance. -J
Finnish and Hungarian have a common ancestor, namely, proto-Finno-Ugric. This ancestor was spoken a long time ago (a couple of millennia) and the relationship between Finnish and Hungarian is about the same as the relationship between English and Hindi; they’re related, but fairly distantly and lots of years seperate the two. Mutual intelligibility is impossible between the two, although some is possible between Finnish and Estonian, which are seperated only by about a thousand years or so–about the same length of time that seperates Low German and English.
Neither, by the way, are Indo-European languages; i.e., Finnish and Hungarian are not related to Swedish and Norwegian at all, though scientists postulate that the Finno-Ugric branch and the Indo-European branch might have sprung from the same proto-proto-language. No one’s been able to prove it conclusively, though, although their arguments have a lot of merit.
Lodrain is almost right. Finno-Ugric is a subfamily of the Uralic language family. Just a minor nitpick.
Finnish and Hungarian are two of just a handful of non-Indo-European languages in Europe. Others are Estonian and Saami* (both of which are also Uralic), Basque, and Turkish. Turkish is an Altaic language, distantly related to Mongolian.
*Lapp
There is much more than “some” mutual intelligibility between Finnish and Estonian. In fact, quite intelligible conversation is possible between the two.
But Lodrain is correct about proto-Finno-Ugric as an ancient link between Finnish and Magyar (Hungarian). As an anecdotal aside, when I was in Budapest a few years ago I met a guy at a bar who was delighted to learn of my Finnish heritage; evidently there is some affinity between the two countries’ cultures, according to him. With a flourish he produced from his pocket a list of the two dozen or so words that are the same in both Finnish and Magyar. Vesi (water) and siili (hedgehog) are the only ones I remember though.
Not the same … but sometimes you can see the relationship.
water:
Finnish vesi
Hungarian víz
Both from Proto-Uralic *vete.
hedgehog:
Finnish siili
Hungarian sündisznó 
In Hungarian, s is pronounced sh. Disznó means ‘hog’ but I don’t know about sün-. You think it could be a cognate of the Finnish word?
How about the numbers 1-6 for comparison? Udmurt (also known as Votyak) is a Finnic language spoken in Russia, near the area thought to be the Finnic original homeland just west of the northern Urals. Mansi (also known as Vogul) is another Ugric language related to Hungarian, spoken east of the northern Urals in Siberia.
# Proto- Finnish Estonian Udmurt Hungarian Mansi
Uralic
1 *ükte yksi üks od'ig egy akwa
2 *kakte kaksi kaks kïk kettö kit
3 *kolme kolme kolm kuiñ három khûrum
4 *neljä neljä neli ñil' négy ñila
5 *vitte viisi viis vit' öt at
6 *kutte kuusi kuus kuat' hat khôt
Here are a few more words:
Proto- Finnish Estonian Udmurt Hungarian Mansi
Uralic
eye *silmä silmä silm sin szem sam
heart *s'üðam sydän süda s'ulem szív sim
hand *käte käsi käsi ki kéz kât
woman *ningä nainen naine nïlkïshno nö nê
Closer to 2,000 than 1,000 for English/German (even of the Low kind). Anyway, it’s really not fair to compare the mutual intelligility of English and other Germanic languages with any two languages of equal historic distance. Not too many other languages have been so heavily influenced by another language (French in this case) as English has been.
One of my professors said that Finnish-Hungarian also has SOME similarities with Korean!?!? True?
Guin:
I controversial theory, at best. THe idea is that the Uralic and Altaic families might be related and that Mongolian and Korean (as well as Japanese) might be related. Big emphasis on both of those “mights”.
Of course, Joseph Greenberg at Stanford thinks he has the the theory of how ALL languages are related. But no many people concur. Anyway, it is likely that all languages DO descend from whatever was spoken by our ancestors in Africa about 75k yrs ago. Unless you believe that language evolved after we left Africa. It’s the details that elude us at this point.
Guin, your professor was referring to typological resemblance rather than cognates. Uralic and Korean use similar agglutinative construction. I don’t know of any cognates between them, however. Korean has a strong likelihood of being part of Altaic, though that isn’t necessarily a slamdunk.
There’s an intermediate stage between disjunct Uralic and Altaic families, and all languages of the world being in one big happy superfamily. This is the concept of “macrofamily”—a higher-level grouping of more than one family.
Nostratic is the hypothesis that relates Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Dravidian, Karvelian, and Afro-Asiatic into a macrofamily. It was first proposed by the Danish linguist Holger Pedersen in the early 20th century, but the real work on it was done beginning in the 1960s by the Russians Vladimir Illich-Svitch and Aron Dolgopolsky who made the Nostratic Dictionary.
In America, Bomhard and Kerns published The Nostratic Macrofamily of Languages in 1994, and you should check out this book for the comparative etymologies and reconstructions linking these families. The connections go every which way, not just binary Uralic-Altaic.
The late Joseph Greenberg, rest his soul, had a somewhat different take on the same data that went into Nostratic. He proposed “Eurasiatic,” which did not include Afro-Asiatic but did include languages of Northeastern Asia, including Japanese, Korean, Ainu, and Chukchi-Kamchatkan.
Uralic does have a relative way out in remote northeastern Siberia, called Yukagir, today a nearly extinct language (maybe a few hundred old timers still speak it, if that many). The two are linked into a taxon called Uralic-Yukagir.
The hypothesis that all the languages in the world can be related is called Proto-World. But to call it controversial would be an understatement. Nevertheless, I like it. I like large, bold projects that thrill the imagination. Maybe there’s something to it after all.
I meant to type that Russian linguist’s name was Illich-Svitych, sorry.
Now let’s compare the above Uralic vocabulary with Altaic and Korean, just for the heck of it. Nenets belongs Samoyedic, to the other branch of Uralic, spoken in northern Siberia by the Arctic Ocean. Chuvash represents a divergent branch of Turkic, more closely resembling Mongolian and Manchu, and associated with Hungarian.
Proto- Finnish Hungarian Nenets Yukagir
Uralic
one *ükte yksi egy ngob' akhte
two *kakte kaksi kettö sidya kiyol
three *kolme kolme három ñakhar yalmang
four *neljä neljä négy t'et nyagon
five *vitte viisi öt samlyangg emgangon
six *kutte kuusi hat mat' malailen
water *vete vesi víz i' onde
eye *silmä silmä szem sev angze
heart *s'üðam sydän szív sey chegonye
hand *käte käsi kéz nguda ningin
woman *ningä nainen nö ne pai
Turkish Chuvash Mongolian Manchu Korean
one bir per neg emu han
two iki ike qoyar juwe tul
three üç vis'e ghurba ilan set
four dört tavata dörve duin net
five besh pilek tabu sunja tasot
six altï ulta zirghugha ninggun yosot
water su shïv usu muke mul
eye göz kus' nidü yasa nun
heart gönül; yürek chere zirüke mujilen shim-jang
hand el ghar gala son
woman kadïn aram eme hehe yoja
As you can see, it’s awful hard to find any Altaic cognates, and Proto-Altaic reconstruction is something of a chimera. There is no discernable resemblance between Uralic and Korean vocabulary.
To deal with this half of the question, the answer is simple: Nobody Knows. One hypothesis was that the Finns came from somewhere in northwestern Asia, and a common variation held that the Sami (“Lapps”) for some reason adopted the language of the Finns, so that an earlier form of Finnish would be the ancestor of the modern Sami languages, although linguistically that’s not likely. (Unfortunately I have to say I think anti-Sami prejudice had a lot to do with that variation.) Mitochondrial DNA analysis has pretty well put this hypothesis to sleep. Finnish mDNA gives strong indications that Finns came from somewhere in Europe, like their neighbors to the west, while Sami mDNA looks more like that of other Uralic speaking peoples in northwest Asia. So what happened? So far it’s a total mystery, but for us language geeks a very interesting ones.