Uralic and Finno-Ugric issues
Hungarian: Finno-Ugric or Turkic? That is the question
“The position of Hungarian as a Uralic language within the “Uralic-Altaic typological belt” is contradicted both by the historical sources and the linguistic evidence. According to the Uralic theory, the Hungarians would originate from the assumed Uralic proto-community” (Marcantonio: The position of Hungarian within the Uralic-Altaic typological belt) while the existing historical sources refer to the Magyars as nomadic people of the Eurasiatic steppe that were living within multi-lingual and multi-ethnic Turkic confederations. Hungarians were never mentioned as living among Uralic peoples.
The historical sources agree that Magyar people came from Central Asia, but because this contradicts the ‘prediction’ of the Uralic theory, the historical sources had to be re-interpreted and considered as ‘mythical’.
Let’s see a concrete example! The Byzantine emperor Constantine in his text, De Administrando Imperio wrote about the genealogy of Turks in this way:
“The nation of the Turks had of their old dwelling next to Chazaria in the place called Lebedia… The Turks were seven clans… They lived together with the Chazars for three years, and fought in alliance with the Chazars in all their wars”.
This passage is usually interpreted as Magyars lived together with the Chazars for three hundred years. Why three hundred? What’s wrong with the number three? Well, simply that three years are not enough to borrow a significant amount of loanwords from another language, right? We know that Hungarian contains old Turkic elements which are undeniable even for the Uralic theory. How to justify it in a way that it fits the Uralic picture? Firstly, let’s say that these elements are borrowings instead of inheritance. Second, because the Turkic influence on Hungarian is clearly deep and pervasive, three years is too short a period to justify it. Third, the Khazars are considered to be Bulghar Turkic, a branch of Turkic from which the Hungarians are supposed to borrow the great majority of their Turkic loanwords. Actually, the borrowings must have come from a West Old Turkic language because this interpretation is compatible with the assumption of the ‘European’ origin, that is ie. Uralic origin of Hungarians. An East Old Turkic origin of the Turkic elements does not fit into the Uralic theory. Actually, in Rona-Tas and Berta not only on West Turkic forms are provided, but the East Turkic parallels too. The most remarkable difference is that while the West Turkic forms are reconstructed, the East Turkic forms are real and attested. In addition, there is hardly any difference between the West and East Turkic words and suffixes.
So, if we don’t like what the sources say, just change it or re-interpret it!
No Uralic Family? No Hungarian-Finnish relationship?
We are taught that there is a Uralic language family. We are taught that Hungarian and Finnish are genetically related languages. This is false!
But why is false information taught to us? We can learn the reasons why textbooks teach this falsity as well-established facts from Professor Angela Marcantonio’s book: The Uralic language family. Facts, myths and statistics. There is a historical explanation: it’s the Darwinian model’s effects on linguistics in the 19th century. But there is more! Did you know that the Uralic-Hungarian genetic relationship theory was promoted by the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy? The author wants to draw attention to the term ‘theory’. As it is a theory, it’s not veritable nor falsifiable, it implies that it’s not based on ‘scientific evidence’. She tells us why linguists believe in the validity of the theory. They simply assume that the Uralic paradigm was established scientifically and nobody questioned it ever again.
She criticizes the method as well. The Uralic language family is established by means of the Comparative Method, however there are many problems with its application. First of all, comparing random words, it ‘fails to distinguish whether the corpus is the result of a true linguistic connection or chance resemblances.’ Second, the reconstructions of the Proto-Uralic node contain more sound-rules than regular etymologies. Third, it’s impossible to distinguish inherited elements from borrowings because borrowed elements assimilate to the sound system of the language in a short time, if not the very time of the borrowing. It means, that it’s impossible to claim whether a linguistic connection is a result of common ancestor, borrowings or chance resemblances.
Well, if the linguistics don’t help us to collect evidence for the Uralic theory, let’s search for evidence from other fields! She examines the historical sources and proves, archeological findings and genetic evidence, but at the end she draws the conclusion: neither linguistic, nor historical, archeological or genetic evidence exists. The whole Uralic language family and the Uralic-Hungarian relatedness are just theory without any evidence.
The final conclusion is that ‘the correlation among the Uralic languages and between the Uralic languages and their neighbours are better described in terms of intersecting isoglosses. These languages form a dialectal continuum.’ The author sees a connection among the so-called Altaic and Uralic languages. Hungarian has a particular importance as it has an extremely poor correlation with Ugric and Finnic languages. If it’s really needed to classify this language, it would be better to categorize it as an ‘Inner Asian’ language as the historical sources testify to this view.
To sum up, the biggest matter is the lack of scientific evidence which if not available means any theory remain only a theory.
It’s not only extremely good and comprehensive book about the foundation of the Uralic theory, but you can also acquire more and other very useful knowledge about linguistics and the issues in the field.
The Ugric-Turkic Infinity War
The Ugric-Turkic battle is over but the war goes on...
Do you know how the Finno-Ugric and Uralic theory was established? I will tell you the backgorund story, how the battle broke out, the main arguments and the results in this video.
I used the following article as a source:
The "Ugric-Turkic battle": a critical review by Marcantonio, Nummenaho, Salvagni