About The Hungarian and English Languages

About Hungarian:

Hungarian (Magyar) is a Uralic, more specifically Finno-Ugric language. Finnish and Estonian are the two main languages that are related to Hungarian. It is very different from Indo-European languages which surround Hungary.

Hungarian is mainly spoken in Hungary by about 10 million people. Another 2.5 million speakers live outside of Hungary but in areas that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before the Treaty of Trianon. These areas are located in the neighbouring countries: Romania (where there is about 1.4 million Hungarian speakers), Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine, Croatia, Austria, and Slovenia. About another million Hungarians live scattered all over the world, for instance there is a large Hungarian community in the United States of America.

The followings are dialects of the Hungarian language: Alföld, West Danube, Danube-Tisza, King's Pass Hungarian, Northeast Hungarian, Northwest Hungarian, Székely and West Hungarian. The speakers of these dialects can understand each other without problems most of the time. There is another dialect spoken mostly in Romania, called Csángó. This minority group has been isolated from other Hungarian speakers as a consequence they conserved a dialect closely resembling medieval Hungarian.

About English:

English is an Indo-European, more specifically West Germanic language which was brought to Britain by Roman troops and Germanic settlers during the Anglo-Saxon era. "Angles" was the name of one of the Germanic tribes this is where the name of the language "English" and "England" come from. The language was also influenced by Viking invaders who spoke the Old Norse language. This Old English changed into Middle English when lots of words were borrowed from Norman. In the 15^th century there was the Great Vowel Shift and this is when Modern English developed. Nowadays English adopts foreign words but new ones are also created continuously.

About 1.8 billion people speak English in the world. It is the first language for about 400 million people, and second for about 1,400 million. It is referred to as the "world language" of the modern era. It is widely used in international business, politics, science, entertainment just to mention a few. English is taught most often as a foreign language. It is the official language of maritime and aerial communications, in 53 countries, the United Nations, European Union and Commonwealth countries and also many international organisations.

 

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About The Author:
Katalin Pankotay is a native Hungarian fluent in both Hungarian and English. Having lived in the US as well as the UK for many years she is very familiar with local slang & culture. She operates a quality Hungarian to English translation service where you can have translations completed by her at very competitive prices. Click Here to learn more and place your order.

 

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