Page:Poetry of the Magyars.djvu/34

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INTRODUCTION.

Magyar and German, or even the Magyar and Latin. There are some curious affinities, but they are not peculiar in the construction of theFinnish and the Hungarian: the copulative conjunctions, prepositions, interrogative adverbs, and possessive pronouns, are all postfixed to the nouns. The adjectival termination es, and the possessive em, are common to the Lappish and the Magyar. The Magyar mene, and the Esthonian minne, are conjugates of substantives denoting action, and is a diminutive in both. The Hungarian and Finmark plural nominative ak, ek, are identical; in Finnish the plural is formed by h. Beregassi's work[1] has traced the affinities of the Magyar into twenty eastern and half the number of western languages. Gyarmath[2] has written with extreme minuteness on

the resemblance between the Hungarian and the Finnish. He produces a number of words ending, for the most part, in as, es, is, os, and ad, which are common to both. Neither has any gender, and they each form their com-

  1. Ueber die Aehnlichkeit der Hungarischen Sprache mit den morgenlaeudischen nebst einer Entwickelung der Natur und mancher bisher unbekannten Eigenschafften desselben von P. Beregassi. 4to. Leipzig. 1796.
  2. Affinitas Linguae Hungaricae cum Linguis Fennicae originis Grammatice demonstrata. Gottîngae. 1799.