The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1983 (10. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1983-06-01 / 6. szám

Page 10

THE EIGHTH HUNGARIAN TRIBE

June, 1983

give, I write. Secondly, the root, when enlarged with the conditional suffix N becomes AD-N-ék, IR-N-ék: I would give, I would write. Thirdly, when inserting the subjunctive suffix J, the following forms emerge: AD-J-ak, IR-J-ak: That I give, That I write., Fourthly, the sign of the past being T, the two verbs in question take the following forms: AD-T-am, IR-T-am, I gave, I wrote. The declension of the noun follows the pattern of the conjugation. There too, the various endings are affixed to the unvariable root, the nominative case excepted, which is the root itself, without a suffix. So the noun HÁZ ‘House’ becomes, with the plural suffix K, HÁZ-ak; with a second suffix BAN meaning ‘In’, we say HÁZ-ak-ban, In houses. All the elements of the word thus formed are written without a hyphen, and merged into a single block: Adtam, írtam, Házakban, etc. Due to its compact character, Hungarian is called a synthetic language, or, owing to the numerous suffixes it uses, a suffix-using (suffixed) or agglutinative language.

Two other features of the Hungarian grammar are, first of all, that it has no gender. So IR may mean ‘She or He writes’, depending on the context. Secondly, it has a fully developed unvaried definite article, used in two forms: ‘A’ or ‘AZ’. ‘A’ stands before nouns beginning with a consonant, while ‘AZ’ is employed before nouns beginning with a vowels. So we say: A HÁZ ‘The house’, but AZ ÉG ‘The sky’.

2. Hungarian has a comparatively large vocabulary, thanks to its great antiquity, and also to the ease with which new words can be made. Forty words which will frequently appear in the forthcoming chapters are listed below. They belong to the oldest layer of the vocabulary and, as such they are mostly monosyllabic. Words denoting parts of the human body: 1. KÉZ ‘Hand’; 2. KAR ‘Arm’; 3. SZEM ‘Eye’. Words for house and its equipment: 4. HÁZ ‘House’; 5. HON ‘Dwelling’ or ‘Land’; 6. TÁNYÉR ‘Plate, Disk’; 7. FAZÉK ‘(cooking) Pot’; 8. SZÉK ‘Chair’; 9. ÁGY ‘Bed’. The environment: 10. ÉG ‘Sky’; 11. FÖLD ‘Earth, Ground’; 12. NAP ‘Sun’ and ‘Day’; 13. VIZ ‘Water’; 14. ÚT ‘Road’; 15. MEZÖ ‘Field’; 16. KERT ‘Garden’; 17. FÜ ‘Grass’. Food: 18. MÉZ ‘Honey’; 19. ITAL ‘Drink’; 20. SÖR ‘Beer-’. Animals: 21. HAL ‘Fish’; 22. MADÁR ‘Bird’; 23. EGÉR ‘Mouse’; 24. KOS ‘Ram’; 25. CSIRKE ‘Chicken’; 26. BÉKA ‘Frog’. Implements: 27. KÉS ‘Knife’; 28. HAJÓ ‘Boat’; 29. SZEKÉR ‘Cart’; 30. KERÉK ‘Wheel’. Religion: 31. UR ‘Lord’; 32. ISTEN ‘God’; 33. KÉP ‘Image’; 34. MÁS(A) ‘Copy

of, Deputy’; 35. PAP ‘Priest’; 36. TUDÓ ‘Magician, Scientist’. Numbers: 37. KETTŐ ‘Two’; 38. ÖT ‘Five’; 39. HÉT ‘Seven’; 40. SZÁZ ‘Hundred’.

How are compound words formed? The simplest way consists of putting the respective stems together, the determining word being placed before its dependent as a rule. Examples: Fut + Ar = Futár ‘Messenger’ (lit. Running man); Hord + Ar = Hordár ‘Porter’ (lit. Carrying man); Nagy + Ur = Nádor ‘Governor, Deputy King’ (lit. Great man). In compound words only the last part takes up suffixes and case-endings, the compound being considered as a single word. In addition to the above mentioned process called nominal composition, Hungarian has another method to build new words with new shades of meaning. It consists of adding derivative suffixes to the root in the case of nouns, and placing prefixes before verbs. The derivative suffixes are very numerous, e. g. — ság (ség) which implies the idea of‘multitude’. Its first form (-ság) fits to roots ending with a back vowel, while the latter fits to those ending with a front vowel, as in KATONA-ság and PÉK-ség: ‘Army’ (lit. Soldier + multitude) and ‘Bakery’ (lit. Baker + multitude), respectively. In the case of verbs, the most important prefixed particles are the directional ones, like In, Out, Up, Down, Forward, Backward, Under, Away, Retour, etc., which are in Hungarian: Be-, Ki-, Fel-, Le-, Előre-, Hátra-, Alá-, El-, Mellé-, Vissza-.

3. The phonetical structure of Hungarian is largely influenced hy stress, which always falls on the first syllable of the word which is uttered with greater emphasis than the others. Now, when the tongue has taken up the necessary position to form a certain accentuated syllable, it is easier to remain in the same position when uttering the subsequent ones. The consequence of this laziness of the tongue is a sound-preference, called vowel harmony. It means that whenever the first syllable includes a back vowel (A, O, U), the following vowels must usually be of the same category. The same applies to the front vowels (E, I), mutatis mutandis.

The sound-preference goes so far as to influence even the simplest suffixes, which have two forms: the one fitting to roots with deep tonality (A, O,

U), the other to those with high tonality (E, 1). The two forms of the suffix ‘In’ are BAN and BEN, and we say FAL-ban ‘In wall’ and KERT-ben ‘In garden’. The law of vowel harmony also governs the formation of compounds and mercilessly brings all the vowels into the general tone of the