8 interesting facts about the Hungarian language

1. Hungarian is one of the oldest surviving languages in Europe

It has roots stretching back to the 10th century and is a member of the Uralic language family and is related to Finnish and Estonian.

2. Hungarian has a unique alphabet

Although the language uses the Latin script, it does not contain any Qs or Ws, and instead replaced them with two additional vowels: Ő (pronounced ‘oh’) and Ű

3. Hungarian has a unique writing system which

It uses a mixture of Latin and Cyrillic characters. It is the only language in Europe to use this writing system.

4. Hungarian has a complex system of vowel harmony

It dictates how vowels interact with each other in a word and ensures that all vowels in a word are pronounced the same way.

5. Hungarian is an agglutinative language

This means that words are formed by combining a series of suffixes and prefixes. This makes it possible to create very long and complex words.

6. Hungarian has 18 noun cases

This is more than any other European language. This allows for greater precision when speaking about different nouns and their roles in a sentence.

7. Hungarian has a very rich vocabulary

Many words have a Turkic origin. This reflects the influence of the Ottoman Empire on the language.

8. Hungarian is spoken by over 13 million people

It is mostly spoken in Hungary but also in countries such as Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. It is an official language of the European Union and the United Nations.