is Ignacz Acsády’s History of the Magyar Empire (2 vols., Budapest,
1904), though its author is too often ultra-chauvinistic in tone.
To those who do not read Magyar the following books on the general history of Hungary may be recommended: Armín Vambéry, Hungary in Ancient and Modern Times (London, 1897); R. Chélard, La Hongrie millénaire (Paris, 1896); Mór Gelléri, Aus der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart des tausendjährigen Ungarn (Budapest, 1896); József Jekelfalussy, The Millennium of Hungary (Budapest, 1897); E. Sayous, Histoire générale des Hongrois (2 vols., Budapest, 1st ed., 1876, 2nd ed., ib. 1900); János Majláth, Geschichte der Magyaren (5 vols., 3rd ed., Regensburg, 1852–1853)—somewhat out of date (it first appeared in 1828), but useful for those who like a little more detail; Count Julius Andrássy, The Development of Hungarian Constitutional Liberty, translated by C. Arthur and Ilona Ginever (London, 1908), containing an interesting comparison with English constitutional development; C. M. Knatchbull-Hugessen, The Political Evolution of the Hungarian Nation (2 vols., London, 1908), strongly Magyar in sympathy; R. W. Seton-Watson (Scotus Viator), Racial Problems in Hungary (London, 1908), a strong criticism of the Magyar attitude towards the Slav subject races, especially the Slovaks, with documents and a full bibliography.
(c) Constitutional: Anton von Virozsil, Das Staatsrecht des Königreichs Ungarn (3 vols., Pest, 1865); S. Radó-Rothfeld, Die ungarische Verfassung (Berlin, 1898) and, based on this, A. de Bertha, La Constitution Hongroise (Paris, 1898), both supporting the policy of Magyarization; Ákos von Timon, Ungarische Verfassungs- und Rechisgeschichte (Berlin, 1904); Knatchbull-Hugessen, op. cit.
(d) Biographical: In Magyar, the great serial entitled Hungarian Historical Biographies (Budapest, 1884, &c.), edited by Sándor Szilágyi, is a collection of lives of famous Hungarian men and women from the earliest times by many scholars of note, finely illustrated.
For works on special periods see the separate articles on the sovereigns and other notabilities of Hungary. For works on the Compromise of 1867 and the relations of Austria and Hungary generally, see the bibliography to the article Austria-Hungary.
III. Language
The Magyar or Hungarian language belongs to the northern or Finno-Ugric (q.v.) division of the Ural-Altaic family, and forms, along with Ostiak and Vogul, the Ugric branch of that division. The affinity existing between the Magyar and the Finnic languages, first noticed by John Amos Comenius (Komensky) in the middle of the 17th century,[1] and later by Olav Rudbeck,[2] Leibnitz,[3] Strahlenberg,[4] Eccard, Sajnovics,[5] and others, was proved “grammatically” by Samuel Gyarmathi in his work entitled Affinitas linguae Hungaricae cum linguis Finnicae originis grammatice demonstrata (Göttingen, 1799). The Uralian travels of Anthony Reguly (1843–1845), and the philological labours of Paul Hunfalvy and Joseph Budenz, may be said to have established it, and no doubt has been thrown on it by recent research, though most authorities regard the Magyars as of mixed origin physically and combining Turkish with Finno-Ugric elements.
Although for nearly a thousand years established in Europe and subjected to Aryan influences, the Magyar has yet retained its essential Ural-Altaic or Turanian features. The grammatical forms are expressed, as in Turkish, by means of affixes modulated according to the high or low vowel power of the root or chief syllables of the word to which they are appended—the former being represented by e, ö, ő, ü, ű, the latter by a, á, o, ó, u, ú; the sounds é, i, í are regarded as neutral. In some respects the value of the consonants varies from that usual in the Latin alphabet. S is pronounced as sh in English, the sound of simple s being represented by sz. C or cz is pronounced as English ts; cs as English ch; ds as English j; zs as French j; gy as dy. Among the striking peculiarities of the language are the definite and indefinite forms of the active verb, e.g. látom, “I see” (definite, viz. “him,” “her,” “the man,” &c.), látok, “I see” (indefinite); the insertion of the causative, frequentative, diminutive and potential syllables after the root of the verb, e.g. ver, “he beats”; veret, “he causes to beat”; vereget, “he beats repeatedly”; verint, “he beats a little”; verhet, “he can beat”; the mode of expressing possession by the tenses of the irregular verb lenni, “to be” (viz. van, “is”; vannak, “are”; volt, “was”; lesz, “will be,” &c.), with the object and its possessive affixes, e.g. nekem vannak könyveim, literally, “to me are books—my” = “I have books”; neki volt könyve, “to him was book—his” = “he had a book.” Other characteristic features are the use of the singular substantive after numerals, and adjectives of quantity, e.g. két ember, literally, “two man”; sok szó, “many word,” &c.; the position of the Christian name and title after the family name, e.g. Ólmosy Károly tanár ur, “Mr Professor Charles Ólmosy”; and the possessive forms of the nouns, which are varied according to the number and person of the possessor and the number of the object in the following way: tollam, “my pen”; tollaim, “my pens”; tollad, “thy pen”; tollaid, “thy pens”; tollunk, “our pen”; tollaink, “our pens,” &c. There is no gender, not even a distinction between “he,” “she,” and “it,” in the personal pronouns, and the declension is less developed than in Finnish. But there is a wealth of verbal derivatives, the vocabulary is copious, and the intonation harmonious. Logical in its derivatives and in its grammatical structure, the Magyar language is, moreover, copious in idiomatic expressions, rich in its store of words, and almost musical in its harmonious intonation. It is, therefore, admirably adapted for both literary and rhetorical purposes.
The first Hungarian grammar known is the Grammatica Hungaro-Latina of John Erdösi alias Sylvester Pannonius, printed at Sárvár-Ujsziget in 1539. Others are the posthumous treatises of Nicholas Révai (Pest, 1809); the Magyar nyelvmester of Samuel Gyarmathi, published at Klausenburg in 1794; and grammars by J. Farkas (9th ed., Vienna, 1816), Mailáth (2nd ed., Pest, 1832), Kis (Vienna, 1834), Márton (8th ed., Vienna, 1836), Maurice Ballagi or (in German) Bloch (5th ed., Pest, 1869), Töpler (Pest, 1854), Riedl (Vienna, 1858), Schuster (Pest, 1866), Charles Ballagi (Pest, 1868), Reméle (Pest and Vienna, 1869), Roder (Budapest, 1875), Führer (Budapest, 1878), Ney (20th ed., Budapest, 1879), C. E. de Ujfalvy (Paris, 1876), S. Wékey (London, 1852), J. Csink (London, 1853), Ballantik (Budapest, 1881); Singer (London, 1882).
The earliest lexicon is that of Gabriel (Mizsér) Pesti alias Pestinus Pannonius, Nomenclatura sex linguarum, Latinae, Italicae, Gallicae, Bohemicae, Ungaricae et Germanicae (Vienna, 1538), which was several times reprinted. The Vocabula Hungarica of Bernardino Baldi (1583), the original MS. of which is in the Biblioteca Nazionale at Naples, contains 2899 Hungarian words with renderings in Latin or Italian.[6] In the Dictionarium undecim linguarum of Calepinus (Basel, 1590) are found also Polish, Hungarian and English words and phrases. This work continued to be reissued until 1682. The Lexicon Latina-Hungaricum of Albert Molnár first appeared at Nuremberg in 1604, and with the addition of Greek was reprinted till 1708. Of modern Hungarian dictionaries the best is that of the Academy of Sciences, containing 110,784 articles in 6 vols., by Czuczor and Fogarasi (Pest, 1862–1874). The next best native dictionary is that of Maurice Ballagi, A Magyar nyelv teljes szótára, (Pest, 1868–1873). In addition to the above may be mentioned the work of Kresznerics, where the words are arranged according to the roots (Buda, 1831–1832); the Etymologisches Wörterbuch ... aus chinesischen Wurzeln, of Podhorszky (Paris, 1877); Lexicon linguae Hungaricae aevi antiquioris, by Szarvas Gábor and Simonyi Zsigmond (1889); and “Magyar-Ugor összehasonlito szótar” Hungarian Ugrian Comparative Dictionary, by Bydenz (Budapest, 1872–1879). Other and more general dictionaries for German scholars are those of Márton, Lexicon trilingue Latino-Hungarico-Germanicum (Vienna, 1818–1823), A. F. Richter (Vienna, 1836), E. Farkas (Pest, 1848–1851), Fogarasi (4th ed., Pest, 1860), Loos (Pest, 1869) and M. Ballagi (Budapest, 3rd ed., 1872–1874). There are, moreover, Hungarian-French dictionaries by Kiss and Karády (Pest and Leipzig, 1844–1848) and Babos and Molé (Pest, 1865), and English-Hungarian dictionaries by Dallos (Pest, 1860) and Bizonfy (Budapest, 1886). (C. El.)
IV. Literature
The Catholic ecclesiastics who settled in Hungary during the 11th century, and who found their way into the chief offices of the state, were mainly instrumental in establishing Latin as the predominant language of the court, the higher schools and public worship, and of eventually introducing it into the administration. Having thus become the tongue of the educated and privileged classes, Latin continued to monopolize the chief fields of literature until the revival of the native language at the close of the 18th century.
Amongst the earliest Latin works that claim attention are the “Chronicle” (Gesta Hungarorum), by the “anonymous notary” of King Béla, probably Béla II. (see Podhradczky,[7] Béla király névtelen jegyzöje, Buda, 1861, p. 48), which describes the early ages of
- ↑ See Hunfalvy’s “Die ungarische Sprachwissenschaft,” Literarische Berichte aus Ungarn, pp. 80-87 (Budapest, 1877).
- ↑ Specimen usus linguae Gothicae in eruendis atque illustrandis obscurissimis quibusdam Sacrae Scripturae locis; addita analogia linguae Gothicae cum Sinica, necnon Finnicae cum Ungarica (Upsala, 1717).
- ↑ Hunfalvy, p. 81.
- ↑ Id. pp. 82-86.
- ↑ Demonstratio Idioma Ungarorum et Lapponum idem esse (Copenhagen und Tyrnau, 1770).
- ↑ See Count Géza Kuun’s “Lettere Ungheresi,” La Rivista Europea, anno vi., vol. ii. fasc. 3, pp. 561-562 (Florence, 1875).
- ↑ So also Jámbor (A Magyar Irod. Tört., Pest, 1864, p. 104). Környei, Imre and others incline to the belief that it was Béla I. and that consequently the “anonymous notary” belongs rather to the 11th than to the 12th century.
