English is not my native language. My mother tongue is Magyar.
Still, I would like to give you a feel of the land and culture of my origin.
So: Please forgive the quality of these translations. They were created with love.
Susan Tomory
Still, I would like to give you a feel of the land and culture of my origin.
So: Please forgive the quality of these translations. They were created with love.
Susan Tomory
NON-MAGYARS ABOUT THE MAGYAR LANGUAGE
Regrettably I have most of the quotation in Magyar translation. I am trying to re-translate them into English – I cannot put them into quotation marks for this reason, but it will still give a translation very close to the original:
Susan Tomory
What do foreigners say about the Magyar language?
Jacob Grimm,
story writer (19th century) and the creator of the first scientific German grammar said:
The logical and perfect construction of the Magyar language superseeds all other languages.
N. Ebersberg
Viennese scientist (19th c.)
The structure of the Magyar language is such as if a congregation of linguists would have created it in order to include all regularities, compactness, harmony and clarity.
George Bernard Shaw
drama writer (he discussed this in an American BBC report more fully):
I may bravely state, that after having studied the Magyar language for years, it became my conviction: if the Magyar would have been my mother tongue, my life could have been more valuable.Simply because in this strange language which is bursting from an ancient force I could have written everything a lot more to the point, the minute differences, the secret stirrings of feelings.
Ove Berglund -
- Swedish physician and translator:
As I have some ideas by today of the structure of the language, my opinion is that the Magyar language is the pinnacle of human logic. (Magyar Nemzet December 2, 2003, p. 5.)
Ede Teller
atomic scientist said this a few years before his death in Paks, Hungary:
“...My new and first rate discovery is that there is one language and this is the Magyar.” (Mai Nap, Budapest, 1991. 9.)
Sir William Dawson
Arthur Custance quotes the Canadian Sir William Dawson from his book titled Fossil Men and Their Modern Representatives of 1883:“If we leave out of account purely imitative words, as those derived from the voices of animals, and from natural sounds, which necessarily resemble each other everywhere, it will be found that the most persistent words are those like "God," "house," "man," etc., which express objects or ideas of constant recurrence in the speech of everyday life, and which in consequence become most perfectly stereotyped in the usage of primitive peoples. Further, a very slight acquaintance with these languages is sufficient to show that they are connected with the older languages of the Eastern continent by a great variety of more permanent root words, and with some even on grammatical structure. So persistent is this connection trough the time, that pages might be filled with modern English, French, or German words, which are allied to those of the Algonquin tribes as well as to the oldest tongues of Europe, Basques and Magyar, and the East.”
(http://custance.org/Library/Volume6/Part_V/Chapter1.html)
* * *
ADORJÁN MAGYAR:
He was the first scientist, linguist, ethnographer, artist, who employed ethnography and linguistics side by side in his linguistic research.
„...again and again we have to realise, we have to come to the conclusion that the Magyar language is the miraculous expression of Nature, the realities of nature, their mirror image expressed in sounds, which will serve as a base to much research in the future.” (Manuscript: p. 2744)
In conversation:
„The Magyar language could not have been created by human minds, it was created by the forces of nature, just as the snowflakes and crystals.”
Regrettably I have most of the quotation in Magyar translation. I am trying to re-translate them into English – I cannot put them into quotation marks for this reason, but it will still give a translation very close to the original:
Susan Tomory
What do foreigners say about the Magyar language?
Jacob Grimm,
story writer (19th century) and the creator of the first scientific German grammar said:
The logical and perfect construction of the Magyar language superseeds all other languages.
N. Ebersberg
Viennese scientist (19th c.)
The structure of the Magyar language is such as if a congregation of linguists would have created it in order to include all regularities, compactness, harmony and clarity.
George Bernard Shaw
drama writer (he discussed this in an American BBC report more fully):
I may bravely state, that after having studied the Magyar language for years, it became my conviction: if the Magyar would have been my mother tongue, my life could have been more valuable.Simply because in this strange language which is bursting from an ancient force I could have written everything a lot more to the point, the minute differences, the secret stirrings of feelings.
Ove Berglund -
- Swedish physician and translator:
As I have some ideas by today of the structure of the language, my opinion is that the Magyar language is the pinnacle of human logic. (Magyar Nemzet December 2, 2003, p. 5.)
Ede Teller
atomic scientist said this a few years before his death in Paks, Hungary:
“...My new and first rate discovery is that there is one language and this is the Magyar.” (Mai Nap, Budapest, 1991. 9.)
Sir William Dawson
Arthur Custance quotes the Canadian Sir William Dawson from his book titled Fossil Men and Their Modern Representatives of 1883:“If we leave out of account purely imitative words, as those derived from the voices of animals, and from natural sounds, which necessarily resemble each other everywhere, it will be found that the most persistent words are those like "God," "house," "man," etc., which express objects or ideas of constant recurrence in the speech of everyday life, and which in consequence become most perfectly stereotyped in the usage of primitive peoples. Further, a very slight acquaintance with these languages is sufficient to show that they are connected with the older languages of the Eastern continent by a great variety of more permanent root words, and with some even on grammatical structure. So persistent is this connection trough the time, that pages might be filled with modern English, French, or German words, which are allied to those of the Algonquin tribes as well as to the oldest tongues of Europe, Basques and Magyar, and the East.”
(http://custance.org/Library/Volume6/Part_V/Chapter1.html)
* * *
ADORJÁN MAGYAR:
He was the first scientist, linguist, ethnographer, artist, who employed ethnography and linguistics side by side in his linguistic research.
„...again and again we have to realise, we have to come to the conclusion that the Magyar language is the miraculous expression of Nature, the realities of nature, their mirror image expressed in sounds, which will serve as a base to much research in the future.” (Manuscript: p. 2744)
In conversation:
„The Magyar language could not have been created by human minds, it was created by the forces of nature, just as the snowflakes and crystals.”
ANCIENT MAGYAR NAMES OF THE MONTHS
THE MONTH
OF
Storms January
Ice breaker February
Spring March
Winds April
Promise May
Sungod June
Blessing July
New Bread August
Mother Earth September
Sewing seeds October
Decay November
Dream December
THE MONTH
OF
Storms January
Ice breaker February
Spring March
Winds April
Promise May
Sungod June
Blessing July
New Bread August
Mother Earth September
Sewing seeds October
Decay November
Dream December
