Hungarian Mongoloid language?

Hungarian Mongoloid language?

The Hungarians does not look any more Mongoloids for the same reasons the Turks in Istanbul look European.

Are Hungarians Mongols? What do you know about this country and language?

Turks don't look European ;-)

The Hungarians were originally an Ugric-speaking (Ugric languages being a branch of the Uralic languages, of which Finnish and Estonian are other notable members) group which came from the eastern side of the Ural mountains, and while they interacted with Turkic groups and like, had little in themselves to do with the Mongols, one way or another, and also once they settled in eastern Europe, they mixed significantly with the Slavic population already there, similar to how the Turkic invaders of the Anatolian peninsula basically mixed with the preexisting population, which was basically Greek, as a whole.

In addition to what Travis said, many current linguists see the Finno-Ugrian languages as kind of a bridge between the Indo-European languages and the Altaic languages (Turkic, Mongoian, Manchu) further east and also Korean and Japanese still further east. This is the so-called Nostratic theory. For a long time, in fact, some linguists have felt that Proto-Indo-European may have been either a Finnish dialect or at least ant early cousin of Finnish. The Finns are very important people.

The Finns and Finnic peoples of Russia vary widely in their physical appearance from blue-eyed blonds and brunettes to brown-eyed blonds and brunettes all the way to people who bear some resemblance to the Koreans and Japanese. However, I don't think anyone really knows what the Proto-Finns or Proto-Indo-Europeans really looked like because you are talking about peoples who lived 8,000 to 10,000 years ago and who left almost no archeological traces.

Even though the original Turks came from the Altai Mountains near Mongolia, most Turks I have met from Turkey look like Europeans but more like southern Europeans for the most part e.g. Greeks, as Travis said. I knew one from Istanbul named Attila who had a ruddy complexion and bright blue eyes but I think his ancestors were probably Macedonian Slavs who converted to Islam and later emigrated to Turkey. The Celtic Galatian type which is also fair and blue-eyed, sometimes even red-headed, can occasionally be seen in the Turkish population too I've read. The Celts were all over most of Europe at one time and pockets of them still seem to survive there in various places much like American Indians do in the U.S. and Canada .

Yes! Recent study indicates that it is possible to speak of a Uralic racial type, an intermediate stage between the European and the Mongoloid

But the Hungarian language indicates a Non-European ancestry, But Uralic or how you like to call it.

Well, the Uralic Region was not inhabited by an European race. A relationship between Europeans and Uralics is Non-sense.
The European Slavs were at the Gate of Europe in the East as far as Dnieper

Yes the Hungarian language presents Mongolic, Turkic and Hunic characteristics

The race of the Hungarians presents different Layers:
The first Layer is MONGOLIC + TURKIC + HUNIC the second European

One thing is that one must not conflate overall ancestry and language and like. For example, while Baltic-Finnic peoples (Finns, Estonians, Karelians, and a whole bunch of smaller groups) are Uralic-speaking, they genetically are more closely tied, as a whole, to the surrounding Germanic and Baltic peoples than they are to the other Uralic-speaking groups, and it has been demonstrated that there has been significant historical contact between them and Germanic-language-speaking groups as well, because of old preserved Germanic loanwords, such as Finnish "kuningas", which is tied to Germanic *"kuningaz". Likewise, there is little difference between Hungarians today, and the surrounding Slavic-speaking groups besides language, and between the Turkish today, and surrounding Mediterranean groups, in particular Greeks, besides language, as well. Just because the languages that these groups speak were brought from outside, by non-European peoples, does not mean that the people speak them today are much different, besides language and culture, from other nearby groups.

> The race of the Hungarians presents different Layers:
> The first Layer is MONGOLIC + TURKIC + HUNIC the second European

Roumanian racist propaganda. Genetic research has shown that Hungarians are 99% like neighbouring Slavs in terms of gene similarity. I have widely travelled through Central Europe and I have seen more fair-headed people in Hungary than in Roumania. Being fair-headed is hardly 'Mongolic'.

cheers

the evil nerd

I'm from Hungary and I know from history that the only constant thing about Hungarians has been the language. The Magyars (as we call ourselves) were a mixed people both linguistically and racially already at the time they settled at the Carpathian Basin, and there they mixed considerably with the Slavic population (also the language took many Slavic loanwords, in all possible fields of life). Later, many German settlers came to Hungary, especially during the repopulation efforts of the southern part of the country following the expulsion of the Turks. This affected the racial composition of the people quite heavily, especialy in Western Hungary, but the language was less influenced by German than it could be expected. Some people in Eastern Hungary bear some resemblance to the ancient Magyars as they could have looked like, but they are a small minority.

The Hungarian language is basically Uralic, but it blended with (or was at least heavily affected by) a Turkic language at quite an early stage (the Magyars used to form a tribal association with a Turkic tribe, the Onogurs, related to the Huns). Hence the present "international" name for the people: Onogur -> Hungarus -> Hungarian/Ungarisch/Hongrois, etc. This is why the Turks regard the Hungarians as a brother nation. Even the Chinese claim that their language and Hungarian are related, because, as they say, the ancestors of both peoples used to co-exist at an early stage at history. Therefore the relationship between the Finno-Ugric languages and the Altaic ones and those further east (Chinese, Koren, Japanese) is quite an interesting subject. Some linguists have even claimed that Hungarian was related to Sumerian, which I personally think is doubtful, until really convincing evidence is found.

Here you can find some information about the early history of the language and the people (the chapter in question and the subsequent ones):
http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/timeless/chapter01.htm
(a good source, although some parts are a little idealised).

I myself would strongly agree that the whole stuff about Hungarians being "Mongolic", "Turkic", or "Hunic" is racist nonsense, but one important note is that it has also been actually used historically partly as Hungarian nationalist propaganda, as a way to separate Hungarians from the surrounding Slavic population, with which they are outwardly identical with, besides with respect to language, and to provide a sense of far-back historical ties, on which nationalism can be based. In addition, it has historically acted as an "explanation", now very outdated and known to be incorrect, for the strong differences between Hungarian the surrounding Indo-European languages, as a whole.

That should be "and the surrounding Indo-European languages" in my above post.

Actually, though, a closer relationship between the Uralic languages and the Altaic ones, while been postulated here and there, is rather strongly doubted in this day and age, and is more a matter of typological features, such as being agglutinative and (mostly) having vowel harmony than anything else. Actually, whether there really is a coherent Altaic language group in the first place has more recently also come into (less strong) doubt, as it's now rather commonly, but in no fashion universally, viewed as likely being a sprachbund rather than a language group unto itself per se. However, this is a far less certain matter than that the Uralic group and the Altaic group or sprachbund are not at any recent level closely tied, for lack of things like common roots and like, despite having /typologically/ similar features overall.

As for Chinese, well, that is in no way connected with the Altaic group/sprachbund, being Sino-Tibetan, which is very different from it, fundamentally. On the other hand, Korean, and more distantly and significantly less certainly Japanese, may be connected with the Tungus group of languages, a subgroup of the Altaic group/sprachbund, but Japanese itself quite possibly has significant Austronesian influence at one stage or another, even though this itself is very uncertain as well. As for Sumerian and Hungarian, yes, that is complete nonsense as a whole, as their typological similarities, that is, being agglutinative, are completely incidental.

I have seen some Hungarians that are strongly "Mongoloid" or Central Asian looking. Afterall, the Kazars one of the groups that contributed to the Hungarian melting pot were a Turco-Tartar people. However, generally speaking there is no doubt that Travis and evil nerd (What a name!) are correct. If the Hungarians were Slavic or Germanic speaking instead, we would automatically call them a "Slavic" or "Teutonic" people. In fact, the Magyars raided as far away as Bavaria, southern France and Catalonia during the early 10th century so Magyar genes are probably not limited just to the Hungarian population.

I knew a Hungarian family growing up near Seattle who ran a Viennese bakery. They were brought to the United States by a church group after the Communist take over in the late 40's. The mother looked white European and was tall but the father was very Central Asian looking, short and stocky. Their daughter Sue, looked more like the father's side of the family with dark eyes and black hair. The son, Val, looked more like the mother's side with fair hair and blue eyes. Both of them were tall, however, which they probably got from their mother's genes.

Travis,

I agree that there is a lot of nationalist propaganda about Hungarian being a "special" language and Magyars being a "special" people, unlike all the rest. However, the language itself is really different from the surrounding Indo-European languages, which is one reason why Hungarian students are slower to learn English, for example, although this last feature may also be due to the fact that they are less exposed to spoken instances of foreign languages than in other countries (most films here are dubbed, for example). And the oldest layer of Hungarian folk music bears the strongest similarity to that of Central Asian peoples, although of course it has also been influenced by Slavic folk music in more recent times. On the whole, in a cultural sense, Hungarians are the most similar to Slovaks and Eastern Croats (those living in Slavonia), with whom they have had the strongest historical ties. This is more important than racial or linguistic ancestry.

I am also aware that the Finno-Ugric, Altaic and Sino-Tibetan families are completely separate, and the popular belief that the peoples are related is due to the fact that they used to get in touch with each other as nomadic, migrating people (but you would be amazed how many scientifically unsupported misbeliefs about Hungarian ancestry are spread in the popular thought, at least among people influenced by the nationalist propaganda). At any rate, after the settlement, the Slavic influence has been the most profound, because Hungarians have co-existed with Slavic peoples for over a thousand years.

Brennus: If you will ever visit Transylvania you’ll see some more Székely ” Hungarians that are strongly "Mongoloid" or Central Asian looking.”just like you said...

But no! I am not promoting a “racist propaganda”. Despite the Romanian–Hungarian political tensions, Romanians and Hungarians coexist in peace here in Transylvania!

Yes! They coexist in peace!

I have many Székely-Hungarian good friends (Secui in Romanian) not Magyars-Hungarians but Székely (with much disputed origins)

Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sz%E9kely.

So what if they are mongoloid or not?
I think that's the extra flavor for such a diverse European continent!

The main thing though is that in Hungary itself, most of the original Magyar population which had entered the area from the east, as well as that of the groups which were associated with the Magyars, mixed with the preexisting Slavic population to such an extent that they aren't distinct from the surrounding population except with respect to language, in most cases, even though there may be some cases in which that has been less so, as such mixing is not certain to be uniform in any particular fashion. The main thing though is that I tend to be rather skeptical of things which go and attribute any kind of "special" nature of one form or another to the Hungarian people, relative to the surrounding, being a Uralic-speaking pocket in an otherwise Indo-European-speaking area aside, due to plenty of Hungarian nationalist propaganda which I have seen myself, much of which has been absolutely lacking in any factual basis whatsoever, such as things associating the Magyars with the Huns, or, as previously mentioned, associating Hungarian with Sumerian, and whatnot.