Talk:Alternative theories of Hungarian language origins

History of the Hungarian Language

Hello,

I am working on a copyedit of this article, but I worry that in doing so I have changed the meaning of the first section. Could someone who is an expert in the field take a look please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xevus11 (talk • contribs) 05:35, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Title rename

I was just looking at this article, which is listed at WP:ANB/CXT. As an English title, this sounds off, and is not the way language families are discussed in English. It's mostly the word 'relations' that seems off here; perhaps it should be 'derivation' or 'development' or something. I don't know Hungarian (except very basic) but I'm guessing that this should be something like, Alternative theories of Hungarian language derivation if we had to stick to close translation, but really if we want to translate the topic, and not word-for-word (assuming the topic is about what I think it is) then the English title should rather be something more like, Alternative theories of Hungarian language derivation and family relationships. "Cladistics" would be too biological, but I was looking for something like that here.

Pinging User:SimonTrew due to this comment. Mathglot (talk) 21:19, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Or maybe Alternative theories of Hungarian language origins, or even, given that these are fringe theories, maybe we should come out and say it: Fringe theories of Hungarian language origins. Mathglot (talk) 00:46, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

In case of renaming, I'd support "Alternative theories of Hungarian language origins".(KIENGIR (talk) 20:22, 4 December 2019 (UTC))

 Done Mathglot (talk) 10:06, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Cal-Ugrian

If you're going to talk about Alternative theories regarding Hungarian, you really must include something about Cal-Ugrian (which is my favorite "alt*Hungarian" theory of all, and I just *wish* it were true, but I wish there were unicorns, too. In any case, see Otto von Sadovszky. Not mentioned in that article, but perhaps it should be, are the well-established connections between Mansi and Khanty, and Hungarian, which would by association establish a link between Hungarian and coastal Miwok. Big Chief Árpád, say, smoke-um békepipa! Mathglot (talk) 21:35, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Has anyone other than Sadovszky ever taken this theory with any seriousness? I'm sure we can find one-off Hungarian–Basque or Hungarian–Tamil or similar proposals, but this seems fringe even for this article (unlike the Turkic and Sumerian alternatives which continue to attract attention). --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 09:12, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Tropylium said,

Has anyone other than Sadovszky ever taken this theory with any seriousness?

Who cares? This is an article about fringe theories. That already means it's a "tiny minority", and "one" fits that bar. See, for example, Fringe theories about the Shroud of Turin, which has various theories supported by an individual. My favorite: the image was formed from nuclear emissions from an earthquake that struck Jerusalem in 33 A.D. Let fringers fringe. Let's face it, the more wacko, the more entertaining; why does anybody come to a "Fringe views on XYZ" article anyway, if not for entertainment? By the way, if you have a link to Hungarian-Basque or -Tamil theories, please forward them. I'm in the mood for some amusement. Mathglot (talk) 10:58, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

References

Believe it or not, Victor Golla (otherwise not known for any affinity to fringe theories) discusses "Cal-Ugrian" quite seriously on page 249 in his volume Califoria Indian languages (1988, University of California Press):

"The numerous lexical similarities and grammatical parallels adduced by Sadovsky are impressive (see Siegl 1994), but his historical explanation-a coastal voyage three thousand years ago from the Arctic coast of Siberia to San Francisco Bay-is highly improbable. If there is a "Cal-Ugrian" connection, it is much more likely to reflect a common historical source for the Penutian Phylum as a whole (including possible remoter affiliations, as with Mayan) and for the Uralic family as a whole, perhaps also involving Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese (Fortescue 1999). The time depth for such a connection would have to be at least ten thousand years." ("Siegl (1994)" is an MA thesis devoted to Sadovszky's theory (California State University, Fullerton), Fortescue (1999) is actually Fortescue (1998), the well-known lumper's classic.)

The second part of Golla's quote is quite cringeworthy at first sight, but the most important word here seems to be "if". In any case, it is quite telling that the linguist most predestined to debunk this theory, Lyle Campbell, AFAIK never spilled a drop of ink about it.

@Mathglot: This one might meet your present mood, in case you have missed it: Talk:Gutian_language#Germanic_Theory (and a bit more of it on my talk page). –Austronesier (talk) 14:44, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

@Austronesier:, that was a highly useful discussion, and in fact, provided me the missing link I've always needed to make sense of all this. Turns out, if you *really* want to know what's going on here, you have to understand that some of the folks who were irradiated in the Jerusalem earthquake in 33, (the ones who thought the Shroud was a hoax, as it happens, and got tired of arguing with the stubborn and gullible Sadducees about it) later accompanied Jesus to North America, and after wandering for, I dunno, lets say 40 years, ended up in the northern San Francisco Bay Area. Where they encountered—you guessed it—the Miwok. The words Sadovszky took for Hungarian, actually go back much further than that, to Galilean dialect, which, of course, as in most cases of language contact started to get picked up by the teenagers, who these days would either be addicted to opiods or writing gangsta rap, but in those days had nothing better to do then compete for peer cred by seeing who could amass the most loanword points; basically, the "likes" of their day. Now, put that crooked eyebrow right back where you got it—I have this on very good authority: you need only to read the monograph by esteemed Aurora boralean linguist Carl Fink, and everything becomes clear. I'd fill you in, but you'll have take my word for it, or else go find it yourself and read it, because although I have some great notes about it, unfortunately this talk page is too small to contain it... Mathglot (talk) 05:58, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

You want crazy? Get hold of a copy of The Diversions of Purley. EEng 08:41, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Subclassification

I do not believe we need to comment on any of this here. The validity of Ugric continues to have some doubts attached to it, but all mainstream critiques regardless agree on the fact that Hungarian and Ob-Ugric are related (be it at a separate Ugric level or just within Uralic). Also, I think there's unwarranted synthesis happening if we try to claim that Vámbéry or whomever was corrently anticipating any of this without a source that explicitly states as much. Ccertainly none of the people in the U–T Battle were anticipating any of the details of e.g. relative chronology of Ugric sound changes — most of them were only first identified some decades afterwards. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 12:30, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Original research

The #Rationale section presents a theory about why these alternative theories exist, and describes this theory in two numbered bullets. This appears to be the personal ideas of unnamed editors at Hungarian Wikipedia. The section was created in February 2016 by Poefi (talk · contribs) as a translated copy of the lead of this 2015 version of the Hungarian Wikipedia article (itself unsourced), and after one significant change in October 2016 by Ssptwriter (talk · contribs) based on the same 2015 hu-wiki article, the Rationale section took the form it now has. Hungarian Wikipedia is not a reliable source and we cannot have original research in this article. This material needs to be reliably sourced, or removed. Mathglot (talk) 22:47, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed it. The part about the 'Ugric-Turkic war' would now need some introduction. It would be useful to mention the state of affairs in the mid 19th century: the were some initial results from the end of the 18th century, but the 'Ugric' theory wasn't really established yet. For example Budenz seems to have started with the assumption of Turkic origin, but later shifted to the other camp. A lot of copyediting is also needed. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 18:14, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Rough translation

The article needs copy editing for proper English grammar and style, as well as using the correct English terminology for linguistic and other terms translated from Hungarian. Also, citations which cite Hungarian references should include the |trans-title= parameter, to make the titles accessible to English readers. And similarly for translations of quotations from Hungarian (or other languages). Mathglot (talk) 23:11, 25 April 2022 (UTC)