Á. Birtalan (ed.).: Bálint of Szentkatolna, Gábor: A Romanized Grammar of the East- and West-Mongolian Languages (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 3.)
Introduction - The Grammar
them have been proven by linguists, e. g. by Ligeti over the decades, some of them have been rejected. : Probably there may be some ideas in this work which can be corroborated by future data and research. Here I only refer to some of Bálint's ideas, to show his approach in finding Hungarian equivalents to particular words. Bálint's etymological proposals are to be found in the grammatical passages and in the vocabulary lists added to the shorter texts, songs, blessings and letters in the Chrestomathy. Besides the Hungarian etymologies, he also suggested both correct and mistaken parallels from Turkic languages. 3 - Khalkha akha (or) "brother, elder", Hung, agg "old" (Bálint: p. 99, in the present book: p. 115) 7 4 - Khalkha. Kalmyk -dal/-del (deverbal noun forming suffix), Hung. -dal/-del, -talAtel without further explanation (Bálint: p. 101, in the present book: p. 117); in fact frequentative (deverbal verb forming suffix) in Hungarian 7 5 - Khalkha oroi "top, mountain summit", Hung, orom "mountain summit" (Bálint: p. 127, in the present book: p. 143) 7 6 - Kalmyk kökö {kök) "blue", Hung, kék "id." (Bálint: p. 169, in the present book: p. 190) 7 7 - Kalmyk bitshkhan, bitshiken (bickn ) "small", Hung, pici, picike "id." (Bálint: p. 169, in the present book: p. 190) 7 8 Bálint's endeavour received an objective evaluation from the noted scholar B. Jiilg: "As considerable may be noticed the essay of G. Bálint, written in Hungarian, Párhuzam a magyar és mongol nyelv terén (Parallelism between the Magyar and Mongolian Languages), crown 8vo. pp. xxx and 62, Budapest, 1877. The national pride of the author scorns the idea that his people should be closely related to the poor hunters and fishermen of the Ugro-Finn race; but this has been proved long ago by the professors of a rational science of language. Accordingly Bálint, in his introduction, opposes Hunfalvy, who maintains this view; and himself tries to prove the Magyars to be as closely as possible connected with the world-storming Mongols. It can be easily conceived that such a thought would flatter the national pride of the Magyars; it is, however, quite impossible. Every rational etymologist knows that the Magyar language is much more closely allied, as far as dictionary and grammar are concerned, to the Finno-Ugrian than to the Mongolian; though it is quite conceivable that Magyar has many roots and words in common with the Mongol, inasmuch as both belong to the Ural-Altaic 7 2 Cf. the thorough discussion in: Ligeti: Mongolos jövevényszavaink kérdése; Ligeti: A magyar nyelv török kapcsolatai a honfoglalás előtt és az Árpád-korban, passim. 7 i Bálint refers to some Manchu-Tungusic and Indo-European parallels at particular words, and Tamil examples - he favoured later - also appear rarely. Above I quoted only a few examples to illustrate Bálint's ideas, it could be the topic of a separate study to collect and analyse all the Hungarian lexemes and morphs from the text. 7 4 This word belongs probably to the original Hungarian vocabulary, cf. A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára. I— III. Ed. Loránd Benkö. Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó 1967-1976, 1984. [The historico-etymological dictionary of Hungarian language] Vol. I. p. 102. 7 5 Zaicz, Gábor (et alii): Etimológiai szótár. Magyar szavak és toldalékok eredete. Budapest, Tinta Könyvkiadó 2006. [Etymological dictionary. The origin of Hungarian words and suffixes] p 134. 6 This word belongs probably to the original Hungarian vocabulary; cf. A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára. Vol. II. pp. 1092, 1094. 7 This word is of Turkic origin, in detail cf. Ligeti, Lajos: A magyar nyelv török kapcsolatai a honfoglalás előtt és az Árpádkorban. pp. 112-114, passim. 7 8 This word is of original Hungarian derivation; cf. A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára. Vol. III. p 182. XX
