Page:Poetry of the Magyars.djvu/33

In the Finnic branches of language some very extraordinary changes will be found, produced by this circumstance. And in Hungarian scarcely less; as, Görög, Greek; Ferencz, Francis.

The Magyar is absolutely devoid of genders, and the female sex is always expressed by a dis- tinct word.^[1] It has only a definite article, az, ez,^[2] which is at the same time a demonstrative pro- noun. It has only one declension, and the pos- sessive pronouns are suffixa to the nouns, as are the personal pronouns to the verbs, modifying both nouns and verbs to a singular uniformity; as for example,

szeretet, love;
szeretni, to love;

szeretetem, my love;
szeretem, I love;
szereteted, thy love;
szereted, thou lovest;
szeretete, his love;
szereti, he loves.

szeretetűnk, our love.
szeretünk, we love.
szeretetek, your love.
szerettek, you love.

Gibbon says, that "the Hungarian bears a close and clear affinity to the idiom of the Fennic race, i. e. the Finnish, Laplandish, and Estho- nian." He is an indifferent authority in philo- logical matters. The words of identity are really

few—far fewer than will be found common to the

1. It is a curious fact that him is one of the words which re- present the male gender in Magyar.
2. Egy (one) is a numeral and not an article.