Organic Magyar Linguistics.

The Untenability Of Present Day Hungarian Linguistics

The author has lived in the U.S.A. since 1956. She was engaged in independent research concerning the Magyar language and ethnography. She audited Prof. Jacobsen’s Sumerian lectures at Harvard University. She utilized Adorján Magyar’s works and the immense material the libraries had to offer. She is founding editor of the bilingual Journal of Hungarian Studies. She lectured in several Magyar forums in the U.S.A: and her writings appeared in Magyar Publications in the U.S.A. and Hungary.

Publications connected with this lecture

Organic Magyar Linguistics

Szerves magyar nyelvtudomány, Heraldika kiadó Budapest, 2004

Magyar-English word origins

Magyar Word-groups and their affiliations with non-agglutinative languages.

Hungary is surrounded by cultures speaking Indo-European languages. Language research in these areas conformed to the rules and characteristics of these Indo-European languages. The politically oppressed Hungary followed these guidelines, which are incompatible with the structure, in fact with all aspects of her language. This methodology produced a host of detrimental consequences:

It prevented the Hungarians from knowing the inherent values of their language and their far-reaching influences upon world cultures.

It sent the Hungarian scholarship into historical blind alleys.

It prevented Hungarians from participating in the decipherment of ancient agglutinative languages, and consequently their understanding remains incomplete even with the best efforts of Indoeuropean based linguistic approaches.

Indo-European linguists ignore important Hungarian linguistic achievements, such as the Tibetan-English Dictionary by Alexander Körösi Csoma.

This artificially created linguistic and historical hiatus prevented and still prevents the Indoeuropean linguists from recognizing fully the existing bridges between languages leading toward a deeper understanding of our common cultural heritage.

Professor Mary Ritchie Key of the University of California, organizer of the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDS) states that no comparable work has ever been produced for non-Indo-European languages. I propose this work to be undertaken by the new generation of unshackled Magyar linguists.

My lecture deals with nineteen aspects of the Magyar language that do not exist in the presently accepted Indo-European linguistics.

Linguists of the Western world base their research by necessity upon the known, Indo-European linguistic rules when they study the evolution of languages. These rules rest upon the present day use of languages and never touch upon the first moments of their birth. Placing the already known and the newly discovered languages onto the map of linguistic achievements according to the Indo-European world view necessitates an incredibly precise work, which almost achieves its goals. Western linguists still continue to battle the outcomes of this almost condition since they feel that behind the collected material there is another, unknown linguistic layer onto which they are unable to put their finger. They call this layer “proto language” no matter where its occurrence is. Linguists identified such a proto language in the most ancient cultural strata up to our days, or almost our days. They found a Proto Sumerian, Proto Hittite, Proto Greek, Proto Celtic language and we could continue this enumeration of proto languages beyond Eurasia to the Proto Language of other continents and distant cultures. This mysterious Proto Language occupies a thick branch of the vast tree of languages, as the November 5, 1990 article of the U.S. News and World Report so nicely illustrated. Here all the twigs and branches of the language tree originate from a Proto Language which leads us to the trunk of the tree which they call “mother tongue”, the birth mother of all languages. They do this without ever defining the concept of the mother tongue.

Western linguists – after they very precisely catalogued the languages - came to the conclusion that the Proto Indo-European language’s birthplace was in Anatolia, in today’s Turkey and it spread from here to all parts of Europe some 8.000 years ago. The British archaeologist Colin Renfrew holds this theory. He also emphasizes that the birth of languages predates the birth of literacy. From an archaeological point of view he believes that the birth and spread of language was the result of the spread of the peaceful culture of cereal growing societies. Grover S. Krantz, the late professor of anthropology at the University of Washington who established the pattern of spread of language groups, held similar beliefs. He identified twelve language branches from which he originated all the known European languages. He placed the birth of languages to a pre-Mesolithic time with the Carpathian basin as its epicenter.[1]

In the Geographical Development of European Languages, he recognizes the Magyar language, – which until now was considered and treated as Europe’s stepchild – the base of European culture. According to his theory the Indo-European languages developed very late in time in Europe and, for this reason, 30% of these languages indicate another, non-European origin. For example he shows that on the early maps of Europe there are no Indo-European river names. We are interested in his following statements:

“The unexpected conclusions here are mainly in the area of increased antiquity ascribed to the original Indo-European dispersion itself, and in the longer residence indicated for some of its subdivisions in their present locations. This would include, for example, developing Greek in its present area since 6500 BC., and Celtic in Ireland since 3500 BC. The antiquity of Magyar in Hungary may be equally surprising: I find it to be a Mesolithic speech that predates the Neolithic entry.”

And a little later: “In at least one major instance the commonly assumed direction of migration of population is reversed here. It is usually stated, that the Uralic Magyars moved into Hungary from an eastern source in the 9th century A.D. I find instead that all the other Uralic speakers expanded out of Hungary in the opposite direction, and at a much earlier date.”

According to Krantz the network of dialects of different regions is understandable to people living in close proximity to one another. This situation changes according to the distances placed between them. He believes that 10,000 years ago Europe and the Near East was one linguistic network. This view coincides with the one held by the Hungarian historian Dr. Tibor Baráth.

Krantz accepts migrations only as far as it becomes necessary to deal with overpopulation. According to his theory all peoples are born, and form a nation where their majority presently resides. He began to work out this theory in 1976 in connection with the tribal placements of the North American Indians. After the success of working out the details of their tribal origins, he began to work out the details of ancient European cultures in 1981. His method takes into consideration the modalities of agriculture, means of survival, the growth of cultures and he regards their growth and radiation toward other regions as their adjunct. He holds that the most likely group to spread a culture were not the mobile hunters but the members of agricultural societies, who had plenty of time and material reserves to undertake such ventures.

“Krantz develops models that are more like those found in the physical sciences. This deductive approach is quite novel in the social sciences where most conclusions are reached inductively. Future scholars on this subject are now in a position to test a variety of hypotheses about the evolution of culture and language in Europe.” says Roger M. La Jeunesse, professor at the University of California.

Krantz mentions that the old, petrified historical views deal only with strong rulers and political borders, even though mankind’s history is the history of smaller groups which are tied into a unit through an affinity of dialects within one language. He emphasizes that the results of linguistics and history have not supported one another until now. Historical borders have to be changed and the regions of languages, their mutual support and the changes they exert upon one another have to come to the forefront. When this is done he proves that the homeland of linguistic and occupational groups, and their migratory routes can be worked out with mathematical precision. He also states at the beginning of his book: “We cannot just move people all over the map solely to accommodate proposed linguistic connections.” This sentence brings to mind the efforts of the Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, abbreviation MTA) which chases the Magyars from Siberia to the Urals in search of a homeland, and gives them a language only in the Carpathian homeland.

One of the cornerstones of Krantz’s theory is the recognition that the evolution of language is just as much a part of the natural order as the selection of a home and it cannot be separated from the nature of human beings and the customs where they have their roots. Adorján Magyar wrote almost a hundred years ago that every culture and cultural achievement survives the longest at its place of origin. He discovered sixteen ethnic groups within the Magyar mother culture. Each of these ethnic groups had a cultic vocabulary within the border of a certain consonantal group. The ancient ethnic groups and their attached word roots and dialects appear in almost the same context in Krantz’s theories, although he was unable to give a sound to these dialects.

Krantz emphasizes that from an anthropological point of view one must be able to answer the following questions:

“1. Why did the people move at all rather than simply remain where they were?

2. Why did they move where they did rather than to some other location?

3. Why did they move when they did rather than at some other time?

4. Why was it they who moved, there and then, rather than some other people?

5. How was the move accomplished over the presumed resistance of the people already occupying the location?”[2]

 

According to him if one can answer these questions, the proposed theory rests on solid ground. The more questions remain unanswered, the less is the value of the theory and one should question if it is worth continuing this line of thought. Krantz worked out the geographical map of the American Indian languages with a 95% success rate. He discovered that people do like continuity, security and if there is no overwhelming reason, they will not move from the familiar region. According to him there are no waves of migrations which entail a complete population change.

According to the second point of his theory, the migrants always move to a territory where they find a population with lower cultural standards than their own.

The migrants can always overstep the linguistic borders; this is the natural result of the migration. But the incoming migrants will soon be absorbed by the settled population and society of that region and they will cease to exist as a separate language and organized entity.

According to Adorján Magyar if the spoken language within the Carpathian basin had not been Magyar before and at the time of Árpád’s conquest, there would be no Magyar language today even if the incoming people of Árpád in the 9^th century A. D. had spoken the purest form of Magyar.

After some deliberation Krantz comes to the conclusion that the peaceful, settled, agricultural societies with hundreds of thousands of people are unable to get moving in one unit. He cites Dennel’s work of 1983 and, following this line of thought, he also came to the conclusion that the migrations which were presumed by archaeologists do not mean a complete replacement of ethnic groups and language groups. In the field of linguistics he mentions that, at first glance, it seems impossible to follow the migration of languages from the most ancient times up to our days. But Krantz’s theories are ground-breaking in this field also. He came to the following conclusions:

1. Today’s linguists believe that from today’s languages one is able to reconstruct the languages of prehistory. But there is no tool as yet which could explain the spread of languages in the pre-literacy period, their rules, the routes of their spread, the speed of spread, since it cannot be presumed that all languages spread at an equal speed. So there is more time for the researches to work and, in this broader framework, archaeologists would be able to supply more data.

2. The second question is how these languages started on their journey of broader differentiation. According to Krantz’s theory the Indo-European languages began with an admixture of languages, language networks and their constant breaking off into smaller groups which must have begun 6400 years ago. He also mentions here Gimbutas’ work of 1977.

3. Thirdly we have to know very accurately some prehistoric languages if we want to be correct in the reconstitution of the spread of languages. Data uncovered by archaeologists deal usually with a leading personality and place names, monuments surrounding this personality. Languages on the other hand are the creation of unknown masses. When we take a look at the earliest known maps of Europe we realize how little these political maps have to do with the linguistic reality of the region.

Krantz comes to the basic conclusion that the huge linguistic spread in Europe was the feat of the peaceful agriculturists and, with this statement, he again agrees with the Hungarian linguist and ethnographer, Adorján Magyar, who stated that only peaceful, creative societies are capable of creating a higher culture.

Krantz’s Climatic Races and Descent Groups examines our journey as part of human evolution from an anthropological perspective and believes its pinnacle was the development of speech. According to him, the one million or so years which today’s scientists give to the development of the ape-men is in no way enough to develop the organs of speech, which is the prerequisite of human speech. He believes it is at this point that the Homo Erectus becomes Homo Sapiens. According to him, for some unknown reason this transformation took place in Europe, more precisely in Central Europe, maybe near the Eastern Mediterranean, when Europe’s population was in its entirety blond and blue eyed. Blood-type in Europe was represented by the Rh negative group.

Here we have to remind ourselves that the Rh negative, blond, blue-eyed Bodrogköz people represent one of the oldest ethnic groups in Hungary which has inhabited the country continuously for 6000 years[3] according to archaeological evidence.

Independently of Professor Krantz, Evan Hadingham, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, places this evolution in Central Europe, more precisely in the region of Érd and Tata in Hungary. In his opinion, human evolution reached its highest peak here without any outside influence.[4]

Linguists of the former Soviet Union place the divergence of the human languages to 14.000 years ago and, according to them, not only the Indo-European languages, but the languages of India and Africa originated here too. They call this ancient language nostratic and consider it as the mother tongue of mankind. This nostratic language was the first crack in the wall of the theory of language groups which until now were believed to be sacrosanct. Nostratic linguists clamor to find common word groups among languages with divergent origins. Their efforts are sometimes rewarded as long as they are willing to make this leap between language families. Such an effort is illustrated in the article of the U.S. News and World Report concerning the “family tree” of the word water: According to this article, the following can be observed:

Proto-languages	Haku
American Indian	Hakw
Dene-Caucasian	Kwa
Nostratic	Haku
Indo-European	Hakw
Latin	Aqua
Old-German	Wazzar
English	Water

 

It becomes obvious, even in this one example, that the consonants H-K and W-T are interchanged freely by the adherents of nostratic theories, and an attempt is made to explain an unfounded theory with this phonetic impossibility. The W which they attach to the H-K consonants may round out the interpretation of the particular words, but the very limited view of today’s linguists hinders this process. I perceive the origins of this hindrance in the fact that this proto language is viewed at all costs as Indo-European, even though the lifeblood of the world’s languages come from a much deeper layer which gives life to the later languages, among them the Indo-European languages. Or in a similar order, the same sap nurtured the Proto world’s hita, the Amerind hit, the Nostratic -ita, the Indo-European hed, the Greek edmenai, the Latin edere, the Old Germanic ezzen, and the English eat.

Only great partiality can deny the antiquity in this matter of the ancient Magyar word root esz-isz (to eat, to drink). We also have to note that the English eat is the direct descendant of this ancient root, where the “s” sound signifies a taking in process which holds true to both drinking and eating. The English language preserved it in the form of eating, but did not follow up with the drinking process which was formed according to another word root. This one example and all the other 640 words collected in my Magyar-English Word Origins[5] show that the closer the place of development of a language was to the Carpathian basin, the closer it adhered to the ancient word roots which are closest in relationship to the Magyar root. These ancient similarities can chart our way toward the place and time of the birth and dispersion of languages.

Concerning the afore-mentioned K-W and W-T word groups, these can be led back to two ancient Magyar dialects: the K-W to the Magyar hab (foam, as in sea-foam), the W-T to the Magyar víz (water), without having to resort to an extra linguistic license to do so. Later explanations will familiarize us with these ancient dialects.

The in the former Soviet Union proponents of the Nostratic theory[6] are Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky. In their study, which they began in the 1960’s, they compared the ancient layers of languages with the names of body-parts, personal pronouns, objects and phenomena of nature, such as the names of the Sun and the Moon. The words that are similar they believe to be a maternal offshoot of the Nostratic language, but they are still unable to go beyond these superficial similarities and find the one originating ancestor. Such is the nostratic majra, the Indo-European merio meaning a young man, the French mari meaning husband and the English marry meaning marriage and connected ideas. Here apples are compared with oranges: the ancient nature words are compared to the much later words of cultural concepts, totally ignoring the natural order of language development even though this journey could lead to far-reaching deductions in the natural sciences. One such observation could have been the realization that this particular M-R word group expressed the male and the female concept within the same consonantal group, as in case of the French mari and mère, thus giving the vowels the differentiating role.

Only few linguists studied the “smaller” languages, such as the Basque and other “exotic” languages. In due course, linguists have to face up to the existing non-Indo-European American Indian languages, and their early divisions for which the Behring Straits, were of little hindrance for as yet unknown reasons.

Luigi Scavalli-Sforza, geneticist at Stanford University, saw a close connection between the development of genes and of languages. He studied 42 gene-pools and came to the conclusion that mankind’s family tree grew out of one single group of people. He believes that this origin took place in Africa some 92.000 years ago. Allan Wilson, Mark Stoneking and Rebecca Cann from the University of California place this differentiation at 200.000 years ago.

The much divided territory of historical linguistics is represented by Brown University’s linguist, Philip Lieberman[7] and Derek Bickerton[8] from Havaii. According to Lieberman, the necessary organ of speech – the larynx – did not yet exist 200.000 years ago. Bickerton, on the other hand, believes that the brain’s speech center was already fully developed millions of years ago, which fact – he believes – is due to mankind’s innate need to give expression to the world surrounding him and to see it in an organized manner. He places the young child’s babble into this first language which induces the grown-ups also to engage in the same talk. The Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center of the University of California came to the unanimous conclusion that pigmy chimpanzees are capable of using a language which follows linguistic rules.[9] Other researchers believe that dolphins, and sea lions are capable of using word-order.

The afore-mentioned researchers, Allan Wilson, Mark Stoneking and Rebecca Cann from the University of California, Berkeley, trace mankind’s gene-pool to an “Eve” who lived 200.000 years ago in Africa. Other research projects assign the same role to an inhabitant of Asia. This question is really of primary importance and its full research is still in the future.

The Russian Sheveroskin states that the once existing ancient language can still be detected in today’s languages. He mentions the Nostratic lapa, the Dene-Caucasian tlalpa, the Amerind dap words as examples, all of them meaning leaf. He could have included the English leaf, the German Blatt and note that these are one another’s reciprocal forms. The Palóc-Magyar lap, lapi, levél, lebeny, libeg, lebeg, lebben, lobban words (lap, lapi = a flat surface, levél = leaf, lebeny = lobe, libeg = to flutter, lebeg = to float, lobban = to flare up, as in fluttering flames) and their extensive word group should never have been omitted. By doing so linguists would also come to the realization that within this word-group the L-B group represents the female essence of creation as opposed to its reciprocal B-L carrying the male concepts of creation, such as Bál, Pál (names of the Sun), pálca, balita (staff, symbol of energy), to mention just a few examples.

Sheveroskin mentions that all kinds of concepts were already present in mankind’s ancient vocabulary but he was unable to find ancient words which express feelings. The Magyar language offers these too, like ó, meaning amazement, bú meaning sorrow. These I will discuss later. For now I will mention that the ó of amazement remained in mankind’s vocabulary as an exclamation of amazement, in Magyar it also became the word meaning ancient.

The article further explains that the inevitable prerequisite in finding the roots of a language is to define what a language is in the first place.

Based on this statement it seems that the Indo-European linguists still have not defined what a language is and neither know, nor use the following points which belong to the Magyar linguistic realities. If the Indo-European linguists are unable to give answers to the following questions, any statement concerning the roots of the Magyar language is only the mirror of their ignorance in this matter and so they are in no way qualified to give an opinion of the same.

Do they know of the following linguistic phenomena which are part of the Magyar language:

1. The phonetic value of creation’s force and matter?

2. Are they familiar with the connection of the symbols expressed in sound and matter and their order?

3. Are they familiar with the order of creation as it reveals itself through the structure of the language?

4. Are they familiar with the phonetic rules of this order?

5. Do they realize the meaning and implications of the reciprocity of words?

6. Are they familiar with the primary importance of word groups?

7. Do they differentiate between the ancient nature words and cultural words and do they know the role of these?

8. Do their linguistic rules reflect the fact that all dialects carry the image of the environment of their origin?

9. Are they familiar with the organic life of languages and their dialects? Do they know how the organic intellectual content of a language exercises power over the development of its society?

10. Are they familiar with the development of new language branches, their order and their organic base?

11. Have they noted that the development of new language branches is the result of the weakening inherent cohesiveness of the original language’s ethic, and intellectual content?

12. Are they familiar with the role of the ancient mono-syllabic words?

13. Are they familiar with the role of the multi-syllabic nature words?

14. Have they charted the independent meaning of sounds?

15. Are they familiar with the meaning of the vowels and their independent role?

    1. the deep vowels express a possibility

    2. the high vowels express fulfillment (Ell-él = process of birth - lives, al-áll = a low base-it stands, ör-őr=circle-guardian)

16. Mankind’s first language was the ancestral emotional language. This language began at the moment of creation. All languages are still nurtured by these ancient springs.

17. The following step in language development comes through the use of consonants, which express their environment.

    1. The first step is the use of one vowel and one consonant. These words are subject and predicate at the same time: within them force and matter are in perfect balance. (Ég-ég=sky-to burn, él-él=the edge of something-to live; ér-ér=artery-to reach something).

    2. the power of the two consonantal word-roots bring to life their native environment and define a concept. (G-gumó=bulb, K-kő=stone, Sz-szem=eye, etc.)

    3. The psychological effect of the consonantal word-roots, like the double organizational focus of societies which depended on an oblong shape as their symbol, like the SZ-M word-group’s society, the Szemere (people of the seed). The Magyar word szervezkedés (organization) contains the concept of szervesség (organic development).

18. Through the spread of the well outlined consonantal groups one can clearly observe the routes taken by a particular society.

19. The first language started from God, it is inseparable from God and the structure of this language contains the order of creation up to our days. (According to Adorján Magyar, the Magyar language is the verbal expression of creation and it is as perfect as crystals and snowflakes.)

     

My study deals with the above nineteen points. As an attachment I can offer my four thousand word collection which shows some of the routes these ancient natural word-roots have taken.

Silver Lake December of 2000.

Susan Tomory

 

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