A long-lost connection

The English Language from the Hungarian View

This website is an information site about the long-lost connection between the English and the Hungarian languages. You will see here the interesting origins of many English words. I have found in many cases that the etymology dictionaries often give variations of the word, some earlier forms of the word, but in the end, they cannot really explain where the word comes from. Yes, from the Hungarian view, many words' origins can be explained.

The website is ongoing; I develop the content continuously.

Interesting parallels
in English and Hungarian

This was one of the first word pairs (in grammar school) that started me researching the connection. I thought excitedly how interesting it was that the English word SAIL is SZÉL = WIND in Hungarian. I thought it peculiar: the same sound, same overall meaning. The connection—one needs wind to sail.

sz = [s] é = [ei] though it is not a diphthong

If two words have the same or similar forms and the meaning is the same or similar (logical connection), then I am quite sure that we are looking at the same word. The chances of an accidental agreement are mathematically very slight.

The word SZÁLL, which means FLY confirms the Hungarian origin as the word is in a system in Hungarian.
SZELLŐ = breeze; SZELLEMES = witty

When I say Hungarian...

The relationship is suggested to be not so much a movement from one language to another, but that there had been an ancient language people spoke before the isolation of nations/languages. The two languages did not have any connection for at least 1000 years, so the connection has to be from much earlier. Today's Hungarian language is the direct descendant of this ancient language keeping it as a whole more or less - other languages have only broken traces of this ancient language. The Celts took many words with them from Central Europe that created this layer in the English language.

The Hungarian language is called such from the times the Hungarian tribes came to the Carpathian Basin some 1500-1000 years ago. The language itself had been in the Carpathian Basin for a long-long time.

The earth crust is very thin in the Carpathian Basin, in the middle of Europe. That means that during the last ice age, it was not covered by ice. Possibly the population survived there and then as the weather started to get warmer, they blossomed again and people left in different directions.
The Etrusks (about whom it turned out spoke an ancient dialect of Hungarian), on whom the Romans built their civilization, or the Ancient Greeks even before then... the Connections between Hungarian and ancient Greek is astounding... they went down to the Greek peninsula several thousand years ago.

Interesting parallels
in English and Hungarian

Playing on the idea of the soul being of the quality of the wind - invisible, light, yet something is there - in both languages, it is easy to see how the SAIL can become the SOUL as well.

Same in Hungarian: SZELLEM = soul, wit, mind

Also consider Seele, German; siela Lithuanian; soul, ziel Dutch; soul Norwegian; soul, själ Swedish; Sjæl Danish sjel Norwegian; sielu, soul Finnish; sál Faroese, Icelandic

How much the Hungarian word is in a system

Just an interesting addition is another way of saying soul in Hungarian:

LÉLEK = soul LÉLEGZIK = breathe

SZÉL = wind and LÉLEGZIK has things in common - this invisible something that blows or we breathe in

Ancient Hungarian layer in the English language

My favourite example: HOUSE

It is curious to me that the makers of this map see the relationship between HOUSE - HUS - HOOSE - HAUS etc. but do not see that the Hungarian HÁZ would be in the same group. As you see the colour of the word, it basically stands on its own.

This is ridiculous. The Hungarian word sounds the same and means the same. I would go further and say the CASA kind of words are the same as well with the h/k sound change, like in hover>cover.
In Hungarian, the meaning is created by the consonants, and vowels further specify things.

The English etymology dictionary does not know where the word comes from. Unknown origin.
Well, let me explain...

HOUSE

The Hungarian language has several ancient stems around which a large number of words collect with the same basic meaning. Such a stem is HO (the consonant H has the meaning, O is the most common vowel sound used with it).
Consider the meaning of all these English words I listed. They all cover or protect something, metaphorically, too:

HUT, hovel, home, hose, hame, humbug, haze, hazy, hood, hair, hat, hoar, hover, cover, card (here H became K)

HOUSE - HÁZ

The Oxford etymology dictionary came up with an unknown origin - they should have looked further.

Check out the many Hungarian words with the same underlying meaning

The Hungarian words for snow and sand have only one thing in common: they both cover/protect the earth.

For the hover-cover-over triplet, there is a corresponding Hungarian word: hever (leisurely lie on something, a bed)

Above, you see letter changes, but with the same idea. The word pairs like horzsol-borzol are proof that these changes actually happened, see explanation above.

The words just go on and on even in English. Only in English academic circles, they do not know about the Hungarian connection, which can actually explain the meaning/origin of the words.

WATER

Let us look at another word with another ancient stem that has been lost.

WATER must be a basic word in every language as it is a basic part of life. Yet, the sound [v]/[w] can be found in most European languages - they likely show a common origin. I do not propose less than the idea that they are different forms of the same word in the once-spoken language of ancient Europe.

The VI ancient stem means things that force something else into motion.

KÖR - CIRCLE

One of the most ancient symbols on the Earth. It is a no-brainer that it has to show the same common origin I have suggested. Not many have seen the connection. Once you get down to the comparative tables, the connection will be undeniable.

the K-R and its soft pair G-R consonants can be found in many words that mean going in a CRooked way, everything that has a CURve in it.

Please note that the English CIRCLE is the same word - we pronounce the C as a [s] today, but in ancient times it used to be [k] just like church (German: Kirche) and chimney used to be 'kemen' (Hungairan: kémény)

Eating and drinking are a basic part of life. It is not likely any language would take these from somewhere else. Yet, there are these words, definitely related. The only solution is that they have a common origin.

LAMP-LÁMPA

Again, what correlations!

Quite amazing - how come the so called linguists do not see these connections?

An amazing link

The many onomatopoeic Hungarian words resonate with their English equivalents. The English grammatical -ing that shows continuous motion can be found in Hungarian, too with the same meaning!
In Hungarian, you will find it with different vowel sounds because the Hungarian language harmonizes the main and the ending words' vowels.

Further examples of the -ing in Hungarian

The words above are great proofs of the connections. For these words, as people lived with nature, have to be their own, yet there are overwhelming similarities. This, again, means that there had to be a common origin.

How come the experts have not seen this?

This also means that the language Hungarians speak today had to be in Europe far far back in time. The Hungarians who then arrived from the east in the Carpathian Basin some 1200 years ago, today's Hungary, had to speak the same language, in other words, those people, part of the Scythian culture had to speak the same language with little variations, otherwise we now would speak a totally different language because rulers rule. Like in Ireland, now everybody speaks English.

This slide below that shows yet another ancient root, the RO, is just amazing! Look at the many English and other European words having the root in words that somehow mean something that breaks the silence/something that worsens and ruins the wholeness of things - just mindboggling!

Pannonia - Britannia

Pannonia was the roman name for the land in the Carpathian Basin, they referred to the part they occupied with it. Above it is explained where it might come from. Interestingly, the BANNUN connection, now in Hungarian is BANYA (NY being a soft 'n' like in 'new'). The word means an old ugly woman, sometimes even a witch. I find it a bit sad how the word degraded in Hungarian from 'mother/mother goddess'.

Photo gallery

Peculiar Hungarian phrases

Unique ways

Hungarian geniuses of the 20th century

When Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi was asked if he believed in the existence of extraterrestrials, he replied, "They are already here among us... they are called Hungarians."

Because of their legendary knowledge, their brilliant imagination, their strange language spoken among themselves, their strange English accent, the 50 or so Hungarian scientists to whom the world owes the greatest discoveries of the 20th century have been jokingly called Martians in American scientific circles.

According to an American study, the 20th century was prepared in Budapest, because it was a Hungarian mother tongue, and almost all the scientists who launched and developed the computer technology, atomic and space research that defined the 20th century were educated in one of the famous Budapest schools. "Neumann, Szilárd, Wigner, march out to the Városliget!" - The arithmetic teacher didn't say this to three kids with water, but to three math geniuses: They were classmates at the Fasori Gymnasium in Budapest, and their mathematical knowledge was so astonishing that their teacher sent them out for a breather instead of writing a test, because they solved even the most difficult problems in no time. All three later became world famous.

Jenő Wigner invented the nuclear reactor,

Leo Szilárd the atomic bomb and

Ede Teller the hydrogen bomb.

Their knowledge unleashed enormous power from the bottle, but all three protested against the use of atomic energy for warfare, against people. They were looking for a source of energy in nuclear fission, not a destructive bomb. Together with Einstein, Leo Szilard wrote to the US President asking for the peaceful use of nuclear fission. It was not his fault that his great invention was used as a weapon of mass destruction. János Neumann is the father of the computer, one of the greatest geniuses of his time. The computer he built in 1943 was the size of a room, but it is undoubtedly the ancestor of computers that have now shrunk to the size of a briefcase. John Neumann was an adviser to US President Eisenhower, who talked him out of attacking China. At his deathbed, senior army officers took turns to keep him from spilling military secrets in a feverish sleep. It was unnecessary. In his deathbed, János Neumann spoke Hungarian...Not only the creation of the computer, but also important steps in its development are linked to Hungarian names.

János Kemény is the creator of the most widely used programming language, Basic, and the e-mail system that conquered the world.

Károly Simonyi developed the spreadsheet program Excel, he is the second man in the famous Microsoft company, and Bill Gates is the man who made him the richest man in the world.

László Lovász and László Bélády are considered the greatest figures of the IT revolution for their software development, while

András Gróf is credited with the creation of microprocessors and personal computers respectively.

Kornél Lánczos, a distinguished theoretical physicist and mathematician, was a colleague of Einstein, to whom the creator of relativity wrote: "You are the only person I know who approaches physics in the same way I do."

Hungarian scientists were particularly attracted to the science of flight. Their discoveries that conquered the air were decades ahead of their time.

Born in Pankota, Arad County, Oszkár Asbóth was educated in Arad. As a colleague of Tódor Kármán, he is a prominent figure in the history of helicopters. Awarded an honorary doctorate by President Kennedy, he has been awarded honorary doctorates by thirty universities. Tódor Kármán is the namesake of craters on the Moon and Mars. He was the inventor of the first helicopter and jet aircraft. Kármán's research led to the development of the supersonic aircraft and rocket technology.

Albert Fonó is the father of the jet propulsion principle.

The thin-walled structures developed by Miklós Hoff are still used worldwide to build aircraft, space rockets and submarines.

Zoltán Bay is a pioneer of space exploration. In 1946, at the same time as American researchers, he succeeded in sending signals to the Moon and detecting echoes with his radar, which he had set up in Budapest.

Győző Szebehelyi was instrumental in getting the Americans to the Moon: he designed the orbit of the Apollo spacecraft.

The names János Csonka and Donát Bánki should be familiar to anyone who gets into a car: the hundreds of millions of petrol engines in the world all run on the carburettor they invented. They got the idea of a carburettor that mixes petrol with air from a florist's daughter who sprayed water on roses by blowing air into a thin tube."I've had a stressful day today," you tell your mother, but did you know that the concept of stress was first recognised and defined by Hungarian scientist János Selye a few decades ago.

Dénes Mihály is the television broadcast, the talkie,

Peter Goldmark, colour television,

Antal Csicsátka, the inventor of stereo technology.

Ernő Rubik's ingenious invention, the world-conquering Rubik's Cube, is no child's play - although you may have managed to solve all six sides of it. In fact, it requires very complex mathematical skills on the part of both the creator and the player.

The most important discoveries of the 20th century were made by Hungarians, six American presidents were advised by Hungarian scientists. The world is amazed: where does this world-shaping intellectual power come from?