Hungarian... an elusive mystery

Hello everyone! :-)

In the past, I have often heard and read very impressive and fascinating things about the Hungarian language.
Many people seem to describe it as a linguistic genius, praising its flawless precision and accuracy... its perfect structure and grammar.. its powerful expressive capacity.. its extraodinary ability to evolve and form new words...... and on and on and on.

Take a look at this video for some memorable quotes from some notable characters as to the genius of the Hungarian language:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj_fHPg-HHg


Now... please don't go on and on about the origin of Hungarian because I have read all about it, including the similarity to Asiatic Khanty/Mansi, the link to Finnish/Estonian, the possible relation to Turkish... etc.
I also know about the lack of gender and the presence of agglutination and vowel harmony.

What I need to know is how Hungarian seem to surpass other languages in terms of linguistic efficiency? .. What exactly makes it "genius"? .. Why are Bernard Shaw and Jakob Grimm so impressed with it?
Also, if possible, can you please give us some examples of this and comparisons to other languages...

Native speakers of Hungarian or not, please enlighten us!

French/Spanish replies are welcome!

<<What I need to know is how Hungarian seem to surpass other languages in terms of linguistic efficiency?>>

Perhaps someone could post a sentence in Hungarian, and then post a clumsy and awkward translation into English, to show how much better Hungarian is?

Perhaps you could find a sentence with subtle complexities that English is completely unable to express, without writing several paragraphs?

>>Perhaps someone could post a sentence in Hungarian, and then post a clumsy and awkward translation into English, to show how much better Hungarian is? <<

Come on now, a language which lacks declension is always far less expressive than one that has it. Check out the following:

English: The black cat sits on the brown wall
German: Die schwartze Katze sitzt auf der braunen Mauer

Eng: The black cats sit on the brown wall
Ger: Die schwartzen Katzen sitzen auf der braunen Mauer

Eng: The black cat jumps onto the brown wall
Ger: Die schwartze Katze springt auf die braune Mauer

Eng: The black cats jump onto the brown wall
Ger: Die schwartzen Katzen springen auf die braune Mauer

See how much the inflections add to it all??? Lol Granted these are simple sentences, but how would they add anything in more in more complex sentences?

Oh sorry, schwartz is in fact schwarz - silly spelling error.

<< Come on now, a language which lacks declension is always far less expressive than one that has it.

Die schwartze Katze sitzt auf der braunen Mauer
Die schwartzen Katzen sitzen auf der braunen Mauer >>


I really fail to see why that is.
How are the German sentences more expressive? Declensions are useless if you know the context.

Le chat noir se balance sur le mur brun
Les chats noirs se balancent sur le mur brun

The only thing that changed is the pluralization of the pronoun and adjective as well as the conjugation of the verb.

However, we already knew that it was only one cat in the first case and three cats in the second case, the pluralized adjective is basically redundant as it's telling us something we already know... it's merely emphasizing it, no more, no less.

This topic is about Hungarian, I don't think HUngarian is similar to German :-)

<< This topic is about Hungarian, I don't think HUngarian is similar to German >>

... he was favouring German (or languages with diclensions) over Hungarian/English (or languages with little/no diclensions) in terms of expressive capacity, so I had to open up another side topic to explain that German is not necessarily more expressive than Hungarian/English just because it employs diclensions.

So... back to the topic, anyone?

Mekanist

I was being sarcastic. I don't see that they add anything much either.

I'm a native speaker of Polish which has like 7 cases and still I find English a lot more expressive because of its multiple tenses and huge vocabulary.

The main question is biased.

"What I need to know is how Hungarian seem to surpass other languages in terms of linguistic efficiency?"

It doesn't. Not for me, at least. Maybe if you elaborate a little more on the term "linguistic efficiency" I will be able to have a proper response to the question.

For a Polish speaker Hungarian would not be "efficient" to learn. It is not similar to any Indo-European language, has a complicated grammar, strange vocabulary and pronunciation. So apart from the fact that it is difficult to learn, it also would not be very useful. Unless you plan to move to Hungary.

How can you so vehemently miss the point?

>>I'm a native speaker of Polish which has like 7 cases and still I find English a lot more expressive because of its multiple tenses and huge vocabulary<<

I wonder if a very complex grammar, such as that of Polish, actually hinders freedom of expression.

Declensions relax the syntax, they allow to express the same thing in many ways by swaping the words around, but with slight meaning variations, hence the increased richness (of the languages with complicated declensions). The languages with complicated declensions are almost syntax free (Romanian for instance).

<<See how much the inflections add to it all??? Lol Granted these are simple sentences, but how would they add anything in more in more complex sentences? >>

The little tiny bits of inflection that English has can be quite useful:

- Example: you see a highway sign "Eat at Joe's". You don't have to specify exactly what Joe's is (probably some sort of eatery, I suppose), but it's owned/operated by someone named Joe.

What heights of expressiveness can a truly inflected language (like Sanskrit, Lithuanian, or Hungauian) rise to compared to English?

<< The main question is biased. >>

Yes, but that was only because of what Shaw and Grimm and many others have said about Hungarian.

Where I personally think Hungarian shows some linguistic panache is its flexible order of words, which allows for certain ones to be placed at the begining of the sentence and therefore, emphasize them.

This case is demonstrated by the wikipedia example:

1-Éva szereti a virágokat.
"Eve likes flowers" (neutral statement)

2-Éva szereti a virágokat.
"Eve does like flowers." (even if someone thought the opposite)

3-Éva szereti a virágokat.
"It's Eve who likes flowers" (not someone else)

4-Éva a virágokat szereti.
"It's flowers that Eve likes" (not something else)

5-A virágokat Éva szereti.
"As we know, somebody likes flowers, and it's Eve" (not someone else)

6-A virágokat szereti Éva.
It's flowers that Eve likes. (not something else)


Regardless of your loyalty to a certain language, this example should impress you. By merely changing the order of the same exact words, you get a different nuance of meaning or emphasis.
Such cannot really be done with I-E language without using prepositions, pronouns, or entire additional sentences to convey the same meaning.

I realize the first three are only differentiated by increasing the pitch on the certain word upon which emphasis is wished, which is not a unique phenomenon by any means, but the last three are intersting.

This can be done since parts of speech are clearly identified through suffixes/prefixes, which renders rigid order unnecessary.