HUNGARIAN WELCOME -- SZIASZTOK! -- JÓ NAPOT KÍVÁNOK!
Hungarian is the official language of the Republic of Hungary. Outside Hungary, a considerable number of native speakers live in the neighbouring countries, in Western Europe, and overseas, mainly in the United States, Canada, and a smaller number of Hungarians can be found in Australia and South America. The total number of native speakers is 14-15 million, which puts Hungarian, out of the 3000-odd separate languages, into the fiftieth place in the world and the thirteenth in Europe. Being one of the few European languages which do not belong to the Indo-European language family, Hungarian is not related genetically to any of the Germanic, Romance or Slavic languages. Its cognate languages cannot be found in the immediate vicinity. Of the languages of Europe, it is related to Finnish and Estonian, spoken in two independent states. With Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, as well as other languages spoken largely in Russia, constituting the Finno-Ugric subgroup, the Uralic language family consists of Finno-Ugric and Samoyed languages, the latter being spoken mainly in Siberia. Over the course of time Hungarian has moved a long way away from its cognate languages. As a result of divergent development, it differs from the rest of the Finno-Ugric languages to such an extent that its native speakers are unable to understand any of the related languages without having studied them. Linguistics, however, has revealed the similarities which have been inherited from the remote past - throughout thousands of years - to serve as important marks, distinguishing present-day Finno-Ugric languages from those spoken in surrounding areas. (Source: http://www.nyariegyetem.hu/) Visit the Program of Russian and East European Languages and Literatures Thanks to Szilvi, Zsuzsi, Rózsika, Pisti, Gergo, Dani, Peti, Balázs, Laci, Aliz, Gábor, Krisztina, Teréz, Szabina, Erzsi, Anti, Feri, Hédi, Samu, and Ágnes for their contributions.