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; |
szeretetem, my love; |
szeretetűnk, our 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