Why is Hungarian a puzzle for linguists?

Why is Hungarian a puzzle for linguists?

When we talk about European languages, we often think of languages that resemble each other: Spanish with Italian, French with Portuguese, German with English. But there's one language that breaks all the molds: Hungarian. For linguists, it's a real puzzle because it seems to live in a parallel universe within Europe.

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Unlike most of the continent's languages, which belong to the large Indo-European family, Hungarian comes from a completely different root: the Uralic family, which it only shares with Finnish and Estonian. In other words, while Spanish and French are "first cousins," Hungarian is a "distant relative" that has very little in common with the rest.

One of its oddities is in its grammar. Hungarian doesn't use prepositions like "in," "with," or "for." Instead, it sticks suffixes at the end of words. For example, where in Spanish we say en la casa ("in the house"), in Hungarian it's expressed with a single word: házban (literally "house-in").

Another baffling detail is its system of grammatical cases. While Spanish barely distinguishes between subject and object, Hungarian has more than 15 different cases to indicate functions like direction, location, company, or possession. It's as if each word transforms into a small map full of information.

The phonetics are just as unique. It has long and short vowels, and its vowel harmony requires that endings change according to the vowels in the root word. For a foreigner, it's like learning to dance with invisible rules that change with every move.

And yet, far from being a chaotic language, Hungarian has an admirable internal logic. Those who study it in depth discover a system as precise as a Swiss watch, but so different that it seems like an indecipherable enigma at first.

Perhaps that's why Hungarian not only baffles linguists but also fascinates them. It's living proof that language can be organized in ways that challenge our ideas, reminding us that each language is its own universe.