Hungarian and Sumerian?

[nJohn West-Hungary]

Scott Littleton – Linda Malcor: From Scythia to Camelot


A Radical Reinterpretation of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and the Holy Grail (paperback edition, Garland Publishing Inc., 2000)

[Vortarulo]

Dear <b>Belus</b>, please switch on your brain and compare John's claims with my counter-claims. Then you'll see it's nonsense what he says.

I'm not saying anything about the route of the Scythians, because I don't know much about them. I just wanted to prove, that linguistically John was totall wrong.

Greetings,
- André

[Varislintu]

Dear <b>Belus</b>, please switch on your brain and compare John's claims with my counter-claims. Then you'll see it's nonsense what he says.

They are most likely the same person, Vortarulo .

[Vortarulo]

Dear <b>Belus</b>, please switch on your brain and compare John's claims with my counter-claims. Then you'll see it's nonsense what he says.

They are most likely the same person, Vortarulo .

Ah, okay. I forgot. Thanks!
Well... then there are only half as many Nostratic believers in the world than I thought.

[millenia]

John
A few simple basic structural similarities dont proove a relationship. While they are necessary to be part of the proof, they aren't enough by themselves. There are many agglutinative languages in the world, especially in the old world, most aren't related to each other. However if you want some good examples of Japanese FinnoUgrian comparisons from a linguist, check Lajos Kazár which rather naively talks of a japanese Hungarian linguistic relationship, based on a group
comparison of basic terms. He is a trained linguist who lived and thought in japan for years. However, he fails to mention that some terms are also Altaic and doesnt talk about those ties. Still there are plenty of FU like words that are very interesting, even if the two arent in the same langauge family due to the huge gramatical differences.

The MAGYAR (hungarian) and the JAPAN are inflective languages...

.A SIO jelentése ( átirata SHIO --- mert a SIO-t "szió"-nak kellene mondani ) japánul

magyar: SÓ = salt
többek között "SÓ", "SÓS VÍZ", dagály/árapály,
"salt, salt water, tides"
John, The Altaic word for water is SU if I remember right and the word salt doesnt come from sea water or ocean water or salt water.

Searched the database using shio rewritten as しお.
潮, 汐 [しお, うしお] - (n) tide, current, salt water, opportunity
**These have nothing to do with salt.

塩 [しお, えん] - (n) salt



a NI jelentései:

Searched the database using ni rewritten as に.
丹 [に] - (n) red, red earth
二 [に] - (num) two
荷 [に] - (n) load, baggage, cargo
[ニ] - (n) 4th in a sequence denoted by the iroha system, 4th note in the diatonic scale (used in key names, etc.)
*** So what does this have to do with NI in Hungarian?

HON jelentései:

Searched the database using hon rewritten as ほん.
本 [ほん] - (n, pref, suf) book, volume, main, head, this, our, present, real, counter for long cylindrical things
[ホン] - (n) phon (unit of loudness)


The association of the SAKA witht these words make
little sense. Its a simple sound alike asociation and nothing more. It prooves nothing more that most languages of the world have similar sounding words meaning different things and occasionally by accident they may partially overlap in meaning.
The Scythians definitely did not come from Japan I can assure you, but from somewhere just east of Europe. Some even say from eastern europe, depending on who you associate them with.

Associating these words to similar sounding Hungarian words without understanding the whole thing is a big mistake.

Personally I am also not a fan of Nostratic, because of several reasons.
1. The over simplified relating of sound alike words with a very vaguely similar meaning is often taken to extreme. This is not to say that all of it is rubbish, but perhaps a big chunk of it is rubbish.

2. The overly simplified "family tree" that ties together agglutinative and inflexional languages into one group without any attempt to relate the branches by some scheme appears to me as a greatly
oversimplifying things. It avoids the obviously much stronger relationships of certain languages to each other to maintain our ignorance rather than to advance our knownledge. It may even be a politically motivated move.

3. Indo European languages and terms are not properly analyzed to indicate those terms which are common to indoEuropean proper, including Iranic and Hindi but many IndoEuropean terms are only in Europe and could be Old European substratum terms borrowed
by the conquerors from the natives.

4. By claiming all these to be IndoEuropean the old European survivors have been stripped of half of their own vocabulary and treated as outsiders and ignored.

Things are strirring however and changing.


LIST OF 35
with updates from our members.including Turkish speakers. The list was provided to me as an “excellent” test of relatedness. ?Then when the list was finished and published the person who offered it was silent. Its was not what he expected.

1) blood, *were /FU
vér/Hu, uir/Khanti,
bhür/Mari, vir/Votj, vir/Komi, veri/Finn,
varra/Lapp,
uri/Sumer, (#w >blk or b.) sumerian normally deletes lead w or uses b. it has no v or w.

2)bone, *luwe/FU
not in Hu, luu/Fi,Est; low/Vogul, ly/Komi, lu/Votj, lyy/Samoyed;

3)die, *kola /FU
hal- /Hu, hool/Vog, kole/Mari, kulem/Votj, kuole/Fi, kool-ma/Est, kaa/Samoyed
gul~halam=destroy/Sumer,
calu/Etruscan;
öl=die?kill/Turkic doesn’t match, where is the leading k/h/g? [Hungarian öl=to kill is a loan]

4)dog, (there are several words in FU) *kutta, *empe, *peni
*kutta: kutya/Hu; kuts/Est; kuts/Liv; kuti/Votj,Komi; kutka/Mordv (also in Hindi)
gidi =dog /Turk (not the usual word)
??kudda=to bite,biter/Sumer,
*peni: peni/Finn; puni/Votj; pon/Komi; piñe/Mordv;
*empe: amp/Vogul; ämp/Khanti; eb/Hungarian;
? kut >kurt =wolf /Turkic (perhaps but how do you explain the r?, this is not a match.)
*kur > _ur=dog /Sumer [ or-das=wolf (dialectical) in Hung ]

5)ear, *peljä =ear /FU
fül /Hu; pile/Mord; pil/Vogul; pil'e/Mordv; pel'/Komi; baelje/Lapp;
pi_, bur/Sumer [r~l alteration is very common in Sumerian according to Thompsen]

6)egg, *muñä =egg & testicle;(It can mean both)
mony,tojás/Hu; muno/Mari; muNi/Vogul; moñ/Fi; monne=egg/Lapp;
monne/Samoyed
nu-mun=seed, [m~n] nuz=egg, mu_ =penis/Sumer E.S.;
meni=sperm/Turkic

7)eye, *silma =eye /FU
szem/Hu; sem/Khanti; shin/Votj,Komi; shelme/Mord; silmä/Fi;
sima/Samoy;
Sumerian has si=see;
Sumerian igi=eye is not related to this but to
another FU term *koke =to see]

8)fire, *tawte, tat =fire; *naj =fire,light;/FU *tule=ignite,fire;
tüz=fire/Hu, taBt=fire/Vogul; tab =fire,fever;
tus-ti=in fire/Etruscan; dib=burn/Sumer
nai =fire,sun/Vogul,Khanti; nap=sun "fiery"/Hu;
nu (11)=fire /Sumer
tuli=fire/Fi; tol/Mordv; gyul=ignite/Hu;
dalla=shine,beam,ray/Sumer
tavish, teb, tav 'fire' /Turkic

9)fish, *kala /FU
hal/Hu; xul/Vog., kol/Votj,Mari; kal/Mordv; kala/Fi,Est; guöllé/Lap
kua~hu_/Sumer (trailining liquids drop, unless they are also first consonant)
[ balik=fish /Turkic does not appear to be related to kala, it’s a partially similar only, however a
k>h alteration with p >b however does exist in Altaic and even Japanese; nipon > nihon. So maybe it is possible. ]

10)full, *täwDe/FU D=dh, B=bh
tele/Hu; tail/Vogul; tet/Khant; dol-ak/Votj; täis/Fi;
dé_/Sumer, [Sumerian looses trailing l, j, N usually]
Thil-en, Thelu, thelu-sa =to fill/Etruscan;
dolu/Turkic

11)give, *amta =give << give food/drink/rations etc;
ad/Hu; ud/Votj,Komi; ando-ms/Mordv; anta/Fi; andma/Est;
_tah > dah/Sumer, (lead vowel lost when next consonant is a nasal mt)
ath~ut/Etruscan;

12)hand, *käte
kéz/Hu; kät/Vog; ket/Khant; kit/Mari; k'ed/Mordv; käsi/Fi,Est; giettâ/Lapp
Sumer has several terms kis-ib=hand,wrist kus'=forearm; haza=to hold;
kich 'leg' (dial.)/Turkic Note as a dialectical rare use it may be a loan, plus a leg should not be linked to hand.

13)horn, *shorwe =horn
szarv/Hu; sur/Mari; shur/Komi,Voth; shuro/Mordv;sarvi/Fi; coarve/Lap;
si_=horn, tur=horned animal/Sumer (s>t common in Ugrian)
?? sür- 'to butt'/Turk this is rather indirect tie in and can't be counted as a trusted match.


14)I, *me =I,me; (m~n)
én=I, -m=I,me/Hu; äm,män/Vog; miñ/Mari; me/Mari; mina/Fi
eng=self, -m =self,me; men=I,myself /Sumer;
_mi, me=I/Etruscan;
men, ben 'I' ; -m 'my, am' /Turk (also IE has matches with this) Ancient shared pronouns are common.

15)know, *tumte= know, can; *kac^ce =able,know,understand
tud =know,understand,táltos/Hu; tunte/Fi; tod/Komi;
tal/Sumer
tut- 'to understand'/Turkic
okos=smart/Hu; hoc^=understand/Vog; kuz^=able/Komi;
gas'-s'u/Sumer

16)louse, *täje=louse;
te-tü=louse, tü-z=to pierce,stabb/Hu; tij/mari; toj/Komi; täi/Fi;
?dih=sting/Sumer;

17)moon, *kuNe N=nk (nazal vellar)
hova>hav>hó=month; hód,hold=moon; xaw/Vog; koN/Mordv; kuu/Fi;
*hana > na-na=moon god; hada=shiny; _id=moon {k>h>blk)/Sumer
kamer, kemer 'moon' /Turkic (how about ai?) Its also interesting that the Turkic word for sun kün also is quite similar to uralic word for moon.
which is also in Akkadian as ku?

18)name, *nime =name,thing [also IE]
név=name,nem=type,sex/Hu; näm/Vog; ñim/Votj; lem/Mord; nâmâ/Lp
nam- =thing,material,abstracts/Su;
lum =abstracts/Etruscan
-lom=abstracts/Hungarian;
nam 'name', laap 'nick name' /Turkic

19) new = *wuDhe [Dh >l is common]
_új/Hu; _uu/Mari; vil/Udm; vil'/Udm; _uusi/Fi; _oDDha/Lapp
gi-bil /Sumer (gi should be viewed as a prefix or the root, since j>g in sumerian is common.) #w>blk or b;


20) nose= *wore or kure, (varies but in Hungarian its related to peak. It is not normally tied to nose in FU languages.)
_or=nose, orm=mtn peak/Hu; in other FU lang it just means peak;
kiri=nose,muzzle/Sumer; kur=mountain,peak, úr=roof,peak/Sumer;
bur-un =nose [*w>b] /Turkic


21) one, (this is explained in more than one way, and as such can have a bunch of synonyms.
*edil=single; *ükse=one <iNese=complete,
*wecha=total, as one;
egyedül=single; egy=one; egész=complete; ösz=total;/Hu
ge_ =one; kes'=totallity,all; as=one <totality,all /Sumer
the usual basic numeral one is explained is:
egy=one/Hu; akva=one/Vog; it/Khant; ykit/Mari; ühsi/Votj; voch=total/Khant; vach/Komi; veshe/Mordv

22)salt, *chake =salt (some languages delete -ke endings)
só=salt, sav=acid,sour/Hu; shah/Vog; shak/Samoy; (also Altaic,Dravidian)
[mun=salt/Sumer; ömen 'salty', sole 'salt' (dial.) /Turkic ]
A strange dialect is always suspect, if not common elsewhere.

23)stone *kiwe =stone,rock
kö(v)/Hu; keu/Khant; kü/Mari; kev/Mordv; kivi/Finn; hul/Etruscan;
ku=ore, za=stone/Sumer za is closer to a hard, sharp type of rock shard in Hungarian szil-ánk which was used to cut things szel=slice, similarly a large rock, boulder is szikla;
kuva 'stone', kü 'stone', kaya 'rock', çul 'stone', tash 'stone' /Turkic

24)sun, there are several terms for it in FU, not one;
*jelä=light,day,sun; *naj-=fire,sun/ugrian;
*naj: nap=sun/Hu; (also in Dravidian); nai/Vog,Khant; nu(11)/Sumer;
*jelä: jalli=lighten/Vog; jale=Samoy;
ila,ili=to shine/Sumer; il/Etruscan
The Sumerian term utu=sungod is tied to the word for time mainly, but its also found in Turkic to also mean sun & time "ödü", Hungarian idö.

25) tail << rear= *pare
far-ok=tail, far=rear,rump/Hu;
päri/Vog; pir/Khant; ber/Votj; bor/Komi; perä/Fin
bar=back,outside,rear,seat/Sumer;

26)this= *ete =this, *at=that;
e,ez=this,az=that, itt=here/Hu; i,it=this/Khant; eta/Votj;
e,etta/Fin; âtte/Lapp;
eta,ita/Etrusc;
??e,ne=this/Sumer (unrelated)

27)thou= *ten
te, -d, -sz=you/Hu; tiñ/Mari; te,tene/Votj; ton/Mord, sina/Fin;
za=you, -zu=your/Sumer E.G, -du=you/Sumer E.S.
[ t>s when followed by e or i]


28) tongue, *ñalma=tongue << ñula =lick but also *kele in some langugages.
*ñalma : ñal=lick, ñel=swallow, ñelv=tongue, ñul=to stretch /Hu;
ñal-emti/Vog; ñelem=lick/Mari; ñol-ams=lick/Mord; nuole=lick/Fin
ñ>Ng in Sumerian quite regularly Ngele =pharinx/Sumer; (??)
*kele: kiált=shout, költö=poet/Hu; kela=word/Vog; kieli=tongue/Fin, keel/Est.
gala =singer priest,cantor; gal-am=artistic?/Sumer;
yala-'to lick' (ñ>y is quite common) /Turkic

29)tooth, *püNe =tooth (English fang is similar)
fog /Hu; päNk/Vog; pöNk/Khant;
püj/Mari; piñ/Votj; peñg/Mord, pii/Fin;

30)two, *käktä =two, *mu=dual
*käktä: kettö=2,mino=one of 2/Hu;
kitü/Vog; kat/Khant; kik/Komi; kaksi=2 /Fin; etc..
??ci =2 /Etruscan; Turkic iki =2
*mu: min=2 (dual), mina =2nd , mas'=twin,mén=both,man=companion/Sumer;
mind=all, más=other, más-od=2nd, más-ik=other, etc./Hu
móG/Vog, móle/Mari, med/Votj, etc.

31)water *wette =river, water (also I.E. but not from it.)
[I don't think this is a loan but an archaic European term that IE also adopted from the natives since its not found outside of Europe, Except in Sumerian term for river _id. There are other terms for river also]
viz=water, ?isz=drink, it-al=a drink; ügy=small river/Hu;
vüt~üt/Vog; vu_/votj, ved/Mordv; Bith/Sam;
ith=drink/Etrusc; _id=river/Sumer;
usu 'water' (w>blk), utah ' drink'; ?maz 'water'; butlugh 'watery' (w>b), ?maz 'water',
ich- 'to drink' /Turkic


32)what= *me (part of a bunch of interrogatives)
mi=what, midön,mi-kor=when, miért=why,mere=which way etc../Hu
män=which/Vog, mögi=what,which/Khant; ma/Mari, Votj; me/Mord
mi-ka=what,which/Fin, mi=what,which/Lapp; (also Altaic)
me-s'e=where to,which way; me-a=where; me-nam=when; me-ta=where from; me-a..lu=how many /Sumer;
ne =what /Turkic

33) who= *ki /FU (also I.E.)
ki/Hu; ke/mari; kin/Votj; ki/Mord, ken/Finn; kes/Est; gi/Lapp
not found in Sumerian, but also common in Altaic kaj
kim =who /Turkic

34) wind= *leile, *tule, *mere, *leile /FU myrks^y=storm/Fin,
ne-mere=a wind spirit of the north/SékelyHu
mer~mir =storm/Sumer;
*leile =wind?, breath, air FU
lél-eg=breath, lehel=breathe, lél-ek=soul, lég=atmosphere, leve-gö=air/Hu
lil=air; lele=soul; lili-ät=breath/Vog; lul/Votj; lol/Komi; leil/Est;
lil=air,wind,spirit/Sumerian
*tule, tul-ma = wind;
tul/Khant; tel/Mari
tel/Votj; tuuli/Mordv, Liv;
tu_ , tu-mu =wind, tuma=fart /Sumer;
tial 'wind' , cel 'wind', tul-ush 'storm' /Turk

35) year ikä =year, time
év=year (-k>v), av=old /Hu; [ k>v is common in Hungarian.]
ii,ji= year/Mari; ije/Mordv;
ika/Fin; jakke/Lapp;
av-il=year,aged/Etruscan; {k>v}
(??m~v mu/Sumer)
ok 'time', okt 'time', chagh 'time, age, era', bil 'time', oza 'time', /Turkic

All technical criticisms are welcome, but simple jeers and sneers or useless oppinions will be just ignored.
Fred H.

[nJohn West-Hungary]

John, what you write is sheer nonsense. It has errors and mistakes everywhere! They are so easy to prove...

TAIFU = TÁJFUN

TÁJ = CLIME / LAND / LANDSCAPE
FUN = it isn't in hungarian, but:

FÚ = to blow / to bluster

Okay, táj means land(scape) in Hungarian. But "Taifuu" is not a native Japanese word, it's from Chinese again: 颱風 (Mandarin: "tái fēng"), of which the 風 (meaning 'wind') can be tracked back to Classical Chinese "prǝm". You cannot claim that "prəm" and "fú" or "fúj" are any similar.



他 is a Chinese loan (M: "tā"; CC: "(s)laj").
佗 is a Chinese loan (M: "tuó"; CC: "(s)laj(s)").
多 is a Chinese loan (M: "duō"; CC: "taj").
田 is a Chinese loan (M: "tián"; CC: "lhin").

Again, no similarity, neither in pronunciation nor in meaning.

Hi, Vortarulo !

Thanks for Your detailed answer.


( Typhoon - "tufan" in Urdu/Persian, though ancestry may be far-eastern)

During our years in Japan, we experienced many wind storms called typhoons, which in Japanese are called taifuu. This word is made up of two Chinese characters. The second character (fuu) means "wind". And since the first character (tai) is the same as the first character in "Taiwan", I used to think that a taifuu was a wind from Taiwan, but actually, there are three different theories about the origin of this word, rooted in Chinese, Arabic or Greek.

and What is the origin of TAIWAN ( hungarian: TAJVAN ) ??

Tajvan 台灣, Taiwan and its capital: TAIPEI - TAIBEJ - TAJPEJ ?

TAI ( TAJ / TÁJ ---> ÉGTÁJ) ( in hungarian: TÁJ ---- TÁJék, TÁJol, TÁJékoztat, TÁJékozódik...etc... )




CHINESEs coming to TAIWAN in 18. centure only...
There lived the KETAGALAN ( NON chinese) tribes.
Today the native populace 2 % only....



( to continue...... )

[nJohn West-Hungary]

John
A few simple basic structural similarities dont proove a relationship. While they are necessary to be part of the proof, they aren't enough by themselves. There are many agglutinative languages in the world, especially in the old world, most aren't related to each other. However if you want some good examples of Japanese FinnoUgrian comparisons from a linguist, check Lajos Kazár which rather naively talks of a japanese Hungarian linguistic relationship, based on a group
comparison of basic terms. He is a trained linguist who lived and thought in japan for years. However, he fails to mention that some terms are also Altaic and doesnt talk about those ties. Still there are plenty of FU like words that are very interesting, even if the two arent in the same langauge family due to the huge gramatical differences.

The MAGYAR (hungarian) and the JAPAN are inflective languages...

.A SIO jelentése ( átirata SHIO --- mert a SIO-t "szió"-nak kellene mondani ) japánul

magyar: SÓ = salt
többek között "SÓ", "SÓS VÍZ", dagály/árapály,
"salt, salt water, tides"
John, The Altaic word for water is SU if I remember right and the word salt doesnt come from sea water or ocean water or salt water.

Searched the database using shio rewritten as しお.
潮, 汐 [しお, うしお] - (n) tide, current, salt water, opportunity
**These have nothing to do with salt.

塩 [しお, えん] - (n) salt



a NI jelentései:

Searched the database using ni rewritten as に.
丹 [に] - (n) red, red earth
二 [に] - (num) two
荷 [に] - (n) load, baggage, cargo
[ニ] - (n) 4th in a sequence denoted by the iroha system, 4th note in the diatonic scale (used in key names, etc.)
*** So what does this have to do with NI in Hungarian?

HON jelentései:

Searched the database using hon rewritten as ほん.
本 [ほん] - (n, pref, suf) book, volume, main, head, this, our, present, real, counter for long cylindrical things
[ホン] - (n) phon (unit of loudness)


The association of the SAKA witht these words make
little sense. Its a simple sound alike asociation and nothing more. It prooves nothing more that most languages of the world have similar sounding words meaning different things and occasionally by accident they may partially overlap in meaning.
The Scythians definitely did not come from Japan I can assure you, but from somewhere just east of Europe. Some even say from eastern europe, depending on who you associate them with.

Associating these words to similar sounding Hungarian words without understanding the whole thing is a big mistake.

Personally I am also not a fan of Nostratic, because of several reasons.
1. The over simplified relating of sound alike words with a very vaguely similar meaning is often taken to extreme. This is not to say that all of it is rubbish, but perhaps a big chunk of it is rubbish.

2. The overly simplified "family tree" that ties together agglutinative and inflexional languages into one group without any attempt to relate the branches by some scheme appears to me as a greatly
oversimplifying things. It avoids the obviously much stronger relationships of certain languages to each other to maintain our ignorance rather than to advance our knownledge. It may even be a politically motivated move.

3. Indo European languages and terms are not properly analyzed to indicate those terms which are common to indoEuropean proper, including Iranic and Hindi but many IndoEuropean terms are only in Europe and could be Old European substratum terms borrowed
by the conquerors from the natives.

4. By claiming all these to be IndoEuropean the old European survivors have been stripped of half of their own vocabulary and treated as outsiders and ignored.

Things are strirring however and changing.


LIST OF 35
with updates from our members.including Turkish speakers. The list was provided to me as an “excellent” test of relatedness. ?Then when the list was finished and published the person who offered it was silent. Its was not what he expected.

1) blood, *were /FU
vér/Hu, uir/Khanti,
bhür/Mari, vir/Votj, vir/Komi, veri/Finn,
varra/Lapp,
uri/Sumer, (#w >blk or b.) sumerian normally deletes lead w or uses b. it has no v or w.

2)bone, *luwe/FU
not in Hu, luu/Fi,Est; low/Vogul, ly/Komi, lu/Votj, lyy/Samoyed;

3)die, *kola /FU
hal- /Hu, hool/Vog, kole/Mari, kulem/Votj, kuole/Fi, kool-ma/Est, kaa/Samoyed
gul~halam=destroy/Sumer,
calu/Etruscan;
öl=die?kill/Turkic doesn’t match, where is the leading k/h/g? [Hungarian öl=to kill is a loan]

4)dog, (there are several words in FU) *kutta, *empe, *peni
*kutta: kutya/Hu; kuts/Est; kuts/Liv; kuti/Votj,Komi; kutka/Mordv (also in Hindi)
gidi =dog /Turk (not the usual word)
??kudda=to bite,biter/Sumer,
*peni: peni/Finn; puni/Votj; pon/Komi; piñe/Mordv;
*empe: amp/Vogul; ämp/Khanti; eb/Hungarian;
? kut >kurt =wolf /Turkic (perhaps but how do you explain the r?, this is not a match.)
*kur > _ur=dog /Sumer [ or-das=wolf (dialectical) in Hung ]

5)ear, *peljä =ear /FU
fül /Hu; pile/Mord; pil/Vogul; pil'e/Mordv; pel'/Komi; baelje/Lapp;
pi_, bur/Sumer [r~l alteration is very common in Sumerian according to Thompsen]

6)egg, *muñä =egg & testicle;(It can mean both)
mony,tojás/Hu; muno/Mari; muNi/Vogul; moñ/Fi; monne=egg/Lapp;
monne/Samoyed
nu-mun=seed, [m~n] nuz=egg, mu_ =penis/Sumer E.S.;
meni=sperm/Turkic

7)eye, *silma =eye /FU
szem/Hu; sem/Khanti; shin/Votj,Komi; shelme/Mord; silmä/Fi;
sima/Samoy;
Sumerian has si=see;
Sumerian igi=eye is not related to this but to
another FU term *koke =to see]

fire, *tawte, tat =fire; *naj =fire,light;/FU *tule=ignite,fire;
tüz=fire/Hu, taBt=fire/Vogul; tab =fire,fever;
tus-ti=in fire/Etruscan; dib=burn/Sumer
nai =fire,sun/Vogul,Khanti; nap=sun "fiery"/Hu;
nu (11)=fire /Sumer
tuli=fire/Fi; tol/Mordv; gyul=ignite/Hu;
dalla=shine,beam,ray/Sumer
tavish, teb, tav 'fire' /Turkic

9)fish, *kala /FU
hal/Hu; xul/Vog., kol/Votj,Mari; kal/Mordv; kala/Fi,Est; guöllé/Lap
kua~hu_/Sumer (trailining liquids drop, unless they are also first consonant)
[ balik=fish /Turkic does not appear to be related to kala, it’s a partially similar only, however a
k>h alteration with p >b however does exist in Altaic and even Japanese; nipon > nihon. So maybe it is possible. ]

10)full, *täwDe/FU D=dh, B=bh
tele/Hu; tail/Vogul; tet/Khant; dol-ak/Votj; täis/Fi;
dé_/Sumer, [Sumerian looses trailing l, j, N usually]
Thil-en, Thelu, thelu-sa =to fill/Etruscan;
dolu/Turkic

11)give, *amta =give <<give> dah/Sumer, (lead vowel lost when next consonant is a nasal mt)
ath~ut/Etruscan;

12)hand, *käte
kéz/Hu; kät/Vog; ket/Khant; kit/Mari; k'ed/Mordv; käsi/Fi,Est; giettâ/Lapp
Sumer has several terms kis-ib=hand,wrist kus'=forearm; haza=to hold;
kich 'leg' (dial.)/Turkic Note as a dialectical rare use it may be a loan, plus a leg should not be linked to hand.

13)horn, *shorwe =horn
szarv/Hu; sur/Mari; shur/Komi,Voth; shuro/Mordv;sarvi/Fi; coarve/Lap;
si_=horn, tur=horned animal/Sumer (s>t common in Ugrian)
?? sür- 'to butt'/Turk this is rather indirect tie in and can't be counted as a trusted match.


14)I, *me =I,me; (m~n)
én=I, -m=I,me/Hu; äm,män/Vog; miñ/Mari; me/Mari; mina/Fi
eng=self, -m =self,me; men=I,myself /Sumer;
_mi, me=I/Etruscan;
men, ben 'I' ; -m 'my, am' /Turk (also IE has matches with this) Ancient shared pronouns are common.

15)know, *tumte= know, can; *kac^ce =able,know,understand
tud =know,understand,táltos/Hu; tunte/Fi; tod/Komi;
tal/Sumer
tut- 'to understand'/Turkic
okos=smart/Hu; hoc^=understand/Vog; kuz^=able/Komi;
gas'-s'u/Sumer

16)louse, *täje=louse;
te-tü=louse, tü-z=to pierce,stabb/Hu; tij/mari; toj/Komi; täi/Fi;
?dih=sting/Sumer;

17)moon, *kuNe N=nk (nazal vellar)
hova>hav>hó=month; hód,hold=moon; xaw/Vog; koN/Mordv; kuu/Fi;
*hana > na-na=moon god; hada=shiny; _id=moon {k>h>blk)/Sumer
kamer, kemer 'moon' /Turkic (how about ai?) Its also interesting that the Turkic word for sun kün also is quite similar to uralic word for moon.
which is also in Akkadian as ku?

18)name, *nime =name,thing [also IE]
név=name,nem=type,sex/Hu; näm/Vog; ñim/Votj; lem/Mord; nâmâ/Lp
nam- =thing,material,abstracts/Su;
lum =abstracts/Etruscan
-lom=abstracts/Hungarian;
nam 'name', laap 'nick name' /Turkic

19) new = *wuDhe [Dh >l is common]
_új/Hu; _uu/Mari; vil/Udm; vil'/Udm; _uusi/Fi; _oDDha/Lapp
gi-bil /Sumer (gi should be viewed as a prefix or the root, since j>g in sumerian is common.) #w>blk or b;


20) nose= *wore or kure, (varies but in Hungarian its related to peak. It is not normally tied to nose in FU languages.)
_or=nose, orm=mtn peak/Hu; in other FU lang it just means peak;
kiri=nose,muzzle/Sumer; kur=mountain,peak, úr=roof,peak/Sumer;
bur-un =nose [*w>b] /Turkic


21) one, (this is explained in more than one way, and as such can have a bunch of synonyms.
*edil=single; *ükse=one <iNese>v), av=old /Hu; [ k>v is common in Hungarian.]
ii,ji= year/Mari; ije/Mordv;
ika/Fin; jakke/Lapp;
av-il=year,aged/Etruscan; {k>v}
(??m~v mu/Sumer)
ok 'time', okt 'time', chagh 'time, age, era', bil 'time', oza 'time', /Turkic

All technical criticisms are welcome, but simple jeers and sneers or useless oppinions will be just ignored.
Fred H.

Hi, millenia !

Yes. Much of questions are UNanswered......


You wrote:

"..潮, 汐 [しお, うしお] - (n) tide, current, salt water, opportunity
**These have nothing to do with salt..."

But in hungarian:

KÖRTE (1): is a fruit
KÖRTE (2): is a BULB / BURNER

The logical connection are SEMANTICAL, VISUAL...etc.


You wrote:

"..*** So what does this have to do with NI in Hungarian?.."

NI --- (1) is INFINITIVE ( ENNI --- to eat, INNI -- to drink, ADNI -- to give, KAPNI to get )

NI --- (2) is an ENDING. ( NŐ - NÉ -- NI ...look: NÉNI ="dame"..)


( Note:
TOLKIEN:: NÍ = women --- )

[Vortarulo]

and What is the origin of TAIWAN ( hungarian: TAJVAN ) ??

Tajvan 台灣, Taiwan and its capital: TAIPEI - TAIBEJ - TAJPEJ ?

TAI ( TAJ / TÁJ ---> ÉGTÁJ) ( in hungarian: TÁJ ---- TÁJék, TÁJol, TÁJékoztat, TÁJékozódik...etc... )




CHINESEs coming to TAIWAN in 18. centure only...
There lived the KETAGALAN ( NON chinese) tribes.
Today the native populace 2 % only....

Well, the Tai in Taifun/Taifuu and Taiwan isn't the same Tai. Look at the traditional Chinese characters:

<b>Taifun</b> = 颱風 [Mand.: táifēng; Cant.: toìh-fùng]
The character 颱 only appears in the word typhoon and has no meaning per se. In fact, it has the radical for 'wind' itself in it.
<b>Taiwan</b> = 臺灣 [Mand.: Táiwān; Cant.: Toìh-waàn]
Literally this means "platform bay". The first character thus refers to a platform or terrace or something broad and flat and it can also mean station. It's also used in words like "arena", "window sill", "balcony", "ink pad", etc.

Compare the two characters with each other:
颱 and 臺
Besides their pronunciation, they don't have anything in common. And there are many more unrelated characters named 'tái', for instance 檯 (table), 台 (you), 抬 (to raise), 苔 (moss), 駘 (slow horse), 鮐 (mackerel), 薹 (sedge), 跆 (to kick), 炱 (soot).

While the origins of typhoon's "tái" are unclear (to me), it doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to Taiwan's "tái". The native tribes on Taiwan are Austronesians, so one might have to find out how they called their island before the Chinese invasion.

I read about the possible origin from Greek <i>Τυφών</i> (typhṓn) over Arabic <i>طوفان</i> (ţūfān), which refers to a mythological monster responsible for storms. I have doubts in this theory, because "fēng" means 'wind' in Chinese, which doesn't seem to me like a loan word or a part of it. However, the similarity between the greep word and the Chinese word are interesting.

On a second thought, the people in the Sóng dynasty, where the word appeared first, spoke Middle Chinese. I can't find out about our "tái", but almost all of the tái words were <i>doj</i> in Middle Chinese, and "fēng" (風) is thought to be read <i>pjuwng</i> in this time. Thus, <i>doj-pjuwng</i>.

The Greeks never came into closer contact with the Chinese, but the Arabs did. The Classical Arabic reading is <b>[tˤuːfaːn]</b> while the Middle Chinese seems to be <b>[doipʲuːŋ]</b>. Classical Arabic didn't have a [pʰ] or [p] phoneme, so they transcribed this sound in Classical Greek <b>[typʰɔːn]</b> with their [f] sound. However, Middle Chinese is thought to have an [f] sound, see words like 趺 — Mandarin: <i>fū</i>; Middle Chinese: <i>fju</i>. So why didn't the Chinese transcribe it with this sound? They also had [pʰ], which would be much closer to [f] than [pʲ]...

Many things that are unclear... this is why I have strong doubts in this theory. The Greek term, by the way, is thought to have derived from the verb "typhein" = to smoke. In contemporary Chinese, his name is written 堤豐; Mandarin: dīfēng. The Middle Chinese would be <i>tej-phjuwng</i> then. Though I don't know when they took over that term, they used a [pʰ] for the Greek [pʰ]/[f] sound. Maybe the 風 was some kind of folk etymology here...

All I can say for sure now, is, that Typhoon and Taiwan are not related words.

Greetings,
- André

[Vortarulo]

LIST OF 35
with updates from our members.including Turkish speakers. The list was provided to me as an “excellent” test of relatedness. ?Then when the list was finished and published the person who offered it was silent. Its was not what he expected.

Very interesting! There's also a similar list, with the most stable and most seldomly borrowed words from the Swadesh list. It has 40 words and I can tell that our lists are almost identical.

I'm working in a linguistic project called ASJP, together with other linguists. ASJP stands for Automated Similarity Judgment Program. See our preliminary website <a href="http://email.eva.mpg.de/~wichmann/ASJPHomePage.htm">here</a>. We collect those 40 lists in all kinds of languages from all over the world (currently we have 911 of them, including dead languages, reconstructed languages and also some major constructed ones). We have (almost) all of the Finno-Ugric languages and we have Japanese, Sumerian, some Turkic languages, most Indo-European ones (including PIE) and many others as well. The words are entered in a phonetical alphabet, similar (but not identical) to SAMPA.

A computer program then compares those 40 words (1 synonym is allowed per word) from each languages and writes a kind of similarity matrix. Another program called splitstree then constructs trees (unrooted ones) showing the relationships between the languages.

For already attested language families, this works extremely well and also the "whole world" tree is very accurate. However, the isolated languages (like Japanese, Basque, Sumerian, Pirahã and Klingon <i></i>) are all over the place. I've written a short comment into my blog, when I first saw and analyzed the "world tree", I also mentioned the position of Finno-Ugric languages and Sumerian there — you can read my entry here:
http://n-true.livejournal.com/489111.html

Of course, our ASJP doesn't give the non-plus-ultra to the historical and comparative linguistics, but at least it shows that among those 40 most stable words there's very little similarity between Sumerian and Hungarian.
The similarity between Indo-European and Finno-Ugric might be due to some supposed IE loan words, such as "nimi" / "name" and some chance similarities. But we're working on excluding attested loan words (such as "person" or "mountain" in English). We're also collecting more data.

[nJohn West-Hungary]

http://tmnall.iweb.bsu.edu/default.htm

[Vortarulo]

http://tmnall.iweb.bsu.edu/default.htm

Okay. So what are you trying to tell us with this link, [s]John[/s] Belus? We already knew that the Formosan languages are considered to be Austronesian.

Thanks for the link anyway, maybe I can drag some 40-words-lists for some Formosan languages out of them (we haven't much of them in our project, currently).

[millenia]

Your links were quite interesting. Its quite a wide net your group is trying to spread, but with a very small number of reference words. From reading what I could find there are a lot of questions that come to mind. But before that I would like to ask for your list of Sumerian words that were used, because my experience with this is that many of the words used in these Sumerian comparisons are quite mangled from their old forms and greatly truncated, thereby totally clouding their links. I am also curious as to how sensitive this comparison program is to sound changes, because after 5,000 + years such changes may also cover up the similarities. Many computer programs are quite lousy at patern recognition as I know from using automated programs, which most humans can outperform quite easily. In your list of language families with good results, very few were included that are no longer living in a close neighboorhod of each other. There was only one major one IndoEuropean listed. That should tell you that its not very capable of finding sound correspondences.

Over 5 years or so ago we were tried a simple program called gloto, which was quite bad at recognizing more complicated similarities.. perhaps because of the lack of proper symbols, and too much reliance on the plain Latin alphabet. In any case we collected a list of 200 basic words from quite a large number of languages and the program could then plot out the language tree. This was far from perfect also since the lists given by modern linguists on Sumerian often has the problems I mentioned, although since then I have found quite a few of the old and more complete forms of the words also, that are much easier to match. So I dug up that old list and can share the results.
Is there any way to force the mail to include a text file without being changed, by removing spaces?
Fred H.

[/img]

[Vortarulo]

Your links were quite interesting. Its quite a wide net your group is trying to spread, but with a very small number of reference words. From reading what I could find there are a lot of questions that come to mind. But before that I would like to ask for your list of Sumerian words that were used, because my experience with this is that many of the words used in these Sumerian comparisons are quite mangled from their old forms and greatly truncated, thereby totally clouding their links. I am also curious as to how sensitive this comparison program is to sound changes, because after 5,000 + years such changes may also cover up the similarities. Many computer programs are quite lousy at patern recognition as I know from using automated programs, which most humans can outperform quite easily. In your list of language families with good results, very few were included that are no longer living in a close neighboorhod of each other. There was only one major one IndoEuropean listed. That should tell you that its not very capable of finding sound correspondences.

I will try to answer your questions in detail.
First of all, yes, 40 words aren't much, but they said that it turned out that the results were as good and partly even better as with the full 200-words-Swadesh list. I joined the project at a later day, so I kind of missed the beginning.
I don't have compiled the Sumerian list myself, so I asked a colleague to mail it to me. I will send it to you when I get it.

About the sound changes — I was surprised about this as well, but the program doesn't regard them. On purpose! The "ASJP orthography" in which the data has to be written contains 7 vowel symbols, 34 consonant symbols, 2 symbols for nasalization and ejectivity each and 2 more symbols to mark two and three coarticulated consonants (thus, [tʰ] is <th> for instance). The program ignores the vowels if the word is larger than CV or VC. Words that are only V are ignored. In coarticulated consonants, the rules of similarity are more complex. So some phonemes are automatically treated similar.
<i>En iNg~LiS sEntEns wud Luk Laik 8is in 8i or8ogrEfi yuzd, bai 83 wEi. </i>
I was wondering as well, why we don't use sound shift rules or the Levenshtein distances, but I was told that the program already works very well without it.

And looking at the world tree, it did. I don't know if I may send the PDF with that tree to you, as everything is still a work-in-progress.

My list of language families with good results (the one in my blog, you mean?) wasn't complete, of course. I don't know much about Austronesian, African or American languages, so I only had a look on Eurasian ones. Some members of our team are experts on South American languages though, and they claim it's quite accurate as well.

I'm not really understanding your argument on why the program is not good in finding sound correspondences.

Over 5 years or so ago we were tried a simple program called gloto, which was quite bad at recognizing more complicated similarities.. perhaps because of the lack of proper symbols, and too much reliance on the plain Latin alphabet. In any case we collected a list of 200 basic words from quite a large number of languages and the program could then plot out the language tree. This was far from perfect also since the lists given by modern linguists on Sumerian often has the problems I mentioned, although since then I have found quite a few of the old and more complete forms of the words also, that are much easier to match. So I dug up that old list and can share the results.

Interesting. I think one major advantage in our project is the maths going on between the automated comparison of the words and the output of the tree. I'm not too familiar what is going on there, but as far as I understand it, we're already substracting a chance percentage from the main similarity, when the languages happen to be phonetically similar (as in, having short words and few phonemes, for instance). Apparently this works quite well.
I'd really like to have a look on your list of Sumerian and compare it with our list. I could also submit the ASJP-ified list of your Sumerian words to our project leader (Søren Wichmann) to have a look where *this* would end up in the tree.

Is there any way to force the mail to include a text file without being changed, by removing spaces?
Fred H.

You could mail it as an attachment. You will find my mail address at the "User Info" button of my blog.

- André

[Frebery]

Hi!
I can just tell you what they teach in Hungary about Hungarian people because I only know that.
So, according to my teacher who teaches Hungarian and speaks Finnish fluently and lived in Finnland for years AND according to a current Hungarian grammerbook from which I study:

The Hungarian laguage is a member of the Finno-Ugric family tree. Khanty and Mansi (languages) and the closest relatives of it, and these languages are spoken in little parts of Russia. It is related to Finnish although the similarity is very low because the base languages separated in about 3000 BC.

[hanumizzle]

The Hungarian laguage is a member of the Finno-Ugric family tree. Khanty and Mansi (languages) and the closest relatives of it, and these languages are spoken in little parts of Russia. It is related to Finnish although the similarity is very low because the base languages separated in about 3000 BC.

That's widely accepted and fairly self-clear. Postulating links between Hungarian and the Austronesian languages is something more of a stretch.

[Steisi]

Vortarulo I admire your noble effort in proving these misguided people wrong. I would like to point out that posting pictures of books does not guarantee that the contents are true. You can also buy this book but that doesn't mean the things in it are fact I only wish that they would learn something from your CORRECT linguistic interpretations

[CoBB]

I can just tell you what they teach in Hungary about Hungarian people because I only know that.
So, according to my teacher who teaches Hungarian and speaks Finnish fluently and lived in Finnland for years

Ahah, that would be P. E. herself, am I right?

Ahah, ugye jól sejtem, hogy ez maga P. E.?

[hanumizzle]

Vortarulo I admire your noble effort in proving these misguided people wrong. I would like to point out that posting pictures of books does not guarantee that the contents are true. You can also buy this book but that doesn't mean the things in it are fact

I bought



and everything in it is obviously factual.

[millenia]

I just want to mention that the list given is not written phonetically, but is a mixture of national spelling and some admixture of the symbols used
by FU linguists. I wrote a software program that
can handle a bunch of languages simultaneously and has vocabulary and sound rules and with that can be used to compare the expected form of words, regardless of the orhography, since thats just included in the sound rules. So it didnt matter to me how it was written, so long as I knew what it represented.

That old list was similarly just using standard Latin letters so it has plenty of problems. The gloto program missed a lot of similarities perhaps also because it got confused by the various national orhtographies, especially digraphs. Yet it still included Sumerian with Finnugor, as dumb as it was
and most IE and others were properly grouped when
there was enough other languages in the group to compare to. I will get you that list though, but may want to comment it up first. I also have a 40word verb only list, since this list of 35 had so few verbs. I will post that also.

Fred

[nJohn West-Hungary]

http://tmnall.iweb.bsu.edu/default.htm

Okay. So what are you trying to tell us with this link, [s]John[/s] Belus? We already knew that the Formosan languages are considered to be Austronesian.

Thanks for the link anyway, maybe I can drag some 40-words-lists for some Formosan languages out of them (we haven't much of them in our project, currently).

That was a supplement only.