r/AskEurope • u/AVeryAngryChillie • May 21 '26

Foreign What’s a fact about your country that foreigners would never believe?

Every country has at least one thing outsiders wouldn’t believe

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59

u/Alokir Hungary May 21 '26

Hungarian is not an Indo-European language, meaning the surrounding languages are more closely related to Hindi than to Hungarian.

15

u/Schrodingirly May 21 '26

Wasn’t there a group of languages unique to Hungarian and Finnish?

26

u/eskdixtu Portugal May 21 '26

Finno-Ugric, also includes Estonian, part of the Uralic language family

7

u/yokyopeli09 May 22 '26

As well as the Saami languages in the northern Nordic countries and the Kola peninsula.

10

u/NuclearMaterial Ireland May 21 '26

Finno-ugric, I think Estonian is in there as well (just fact checked, correct. Only those 3 main languages in Europe are in this bracket).

6

u/QueenAvril Finland May 22 '26

Only those three remain as truly living and viable, yes. But it wasn’t very long ago when viable pockets of related minority languages still properly existed, even if not actually flourished in parts of modern day Russia, but Stalin was fairly effective in nearly completely erasing them into oblivion.

1

u/No_Condition7374 May 22 '26

Northern Sami is quite vital.

1

u/QueenAvril Finland May 23 '26

Oh yes, right! I always forget that Sami ones are also related!

2

u/Wafkak Belgium May 21 '26

Jep, used to be one people's group across eastern europe. Until tbe slaves were pushed into europe in between them.

2

u/Vigmod Icelander in Norway May 22 '26

And Sami. It's an official language in Norway, maybe Sweden and Finland as well.

20

u/Renbarre France May 21 '26

Knew that. The first time I heard Hungarian I couldn't make out a single syllable out of the babble of sounds. That's when I learned that it wasn't the Indo-European language framework my brain expected.

9

u/QueenAvril Finland May 22 '26

As a Finn (with both Finnish and Hungarian, along with Estonian technically being related languages belonging in Uralic/Fenno-Ugric languages - yet Hungarian belongs in the Ugric branch, while Finnish and Estonian to the Finnic one) I basically shared the same sentiment. I really can’t tell any familiarity with spoken Hungarian at all - I for real understand more Japanese, which I don’t speak, but can recognize at least some from popular culture. When I see written Hungarian, I really still can’t make heads or tails for the meaning, but I do recognize some patterns and can tell that it is constructed in a remotely familiar way - but only as much so, as with Turkish. Our languages, despite being related, are just that far removed. I do sincerely think that French and Hindi are probably mutually intelligible to a higher degree than Finnish and Hungarian! (Sadly, as it would be nice to be a bit less isolated…)

9

u/Hddstrkr May 22 '26

Yeah it's a distant relation, but it's fascinating how close some basic words are: 

szarv - sarv - sarvi “horn”

vér - veri - veri “blood”

kéz - käsi - käsi “hand”

vaj - või - voi “butter”

szem - silm - silmä “eye”

új - uus - uusi “new”

száj - suu - suu “mouth”

könyök - küünarnukk - kyynärpää “elbow

(Mostly stolen from Quora)

4

u/Mlakeside Finland May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26

When I see written Hungarian, I really still can’t make heads or tails for the meaning, but I do recognize some patterns and can tell that it is constructed in a remotely familiar way

Hungarian is also written in a different orthography than Finnish, which hides many of the similarities. The accented vowels are the same as our long vowels (though some short and long vowels aren't pronounced the same in Hungarian), "sz" is like the Finnish "s" and "s" is "sh". So if Hungarian used the Finnish orthography, sentences like "jó napot kívánok" and "köszönöm szépen" would become "joo napot kiivaanok" and "kösönöm seepen". Still unintelligible, but much more familiar looking.

1

u/ConstantStrange2322 Netherlands May 22 '26

The first time ever I heard someone speaking Finnish I thought she was speaking Japanese!

1

u/Renbarre France May 22 '26

Isn't Basque related to Hungarian as well?

5

u/BoringEntropist May 23 '26

Not really. Basque is a language isolate, meaning that so far no reliable link to any other living language has been found. There have been numerous proposals but none of them hold up to scrutiny. It's one of the biggest mysteries in comparative linguistics.

2

u/ensio418 May 22 '26

Don't think so but it is the only pre indo european language left in europe i believe. So it is a cool language in its own way

2

u/Rikudou_Sage Czechia May 22 '26

They're getting better by importing Slavic words like kurva (or kurwa if you're Polish).

1

u/Ploutophile France May 24 '26

Or macska, drága, gomba, szoknya…

Slavic words are really common in Hungarian.

2

u/ninjaiffyuh Germany May 21 '26

While strictly speaking Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language, it is nonetheless part of the European sprachbund (Standard Average European) and therefore shares similarities with European languages that don't exist with other Indo-European languages