# Japanese–Hungarian linguistic connection

Japanese–Hungarian linguistic connection is a theory which holds the linguistic similarity between the Japanese and Hungarian languages. The theory often appears as part of other theories, such as the obsolete Ural-Altaic origin theory. The theory is based on similarities in Vocabulary and Grammar — both being agglutinative languages, using the YMD system and postpositions, lacking Grammatical gender, usually following the same word order, using vowel harmony, using the Eastern name order, being honorifically similar, able to form future tense by only using present, and mark the past tense with the "t" sound.

## 19th Century

In 1823 Heinrich Julius Klaproth published his work Asia Polyglotta, in which Japanese is classified as Finno-Ugric, on the bases that many basic words are similar, hi 'fire' – Permic bi, Thai fei, Javanese api; choshi – Khanty chos, chus, kos.
In 1857 Anton Boller proposed that Japanese descended from the Ural-Altaic language group.
As well as Gábor Szentkatolnai Bálint who in 1897 argued that the Hungarian and Japanese language groups must be connected because many of the languages' suffixes are identical. According to him there are also about 800 Hungarian base words of Japanese origin, such as Hungarian bába ('old woman') from Japanese ばば/baba 'grandmother', from ちち ('breast' pronounced as chichi) to csecs ('breast' pronounced as chech), from おっかさん/okkasan 'mother' to old-Hungarian ochin (now asszony 'married woman'), tsunagi/繋 'attach, fasten' from to zsineg 'twine'.

## 20th Century

Heinrich Winkler in 1909, in his writing Der uralaltaische Sprachstamm, das Finnische und das Japanische also wrote about the Finno-Ugric origins of Japanese.
According to Winkler the ancient Finno-Ugric language is structurally connected to the Altaic and Japanese languages. Syntactically the Hungarian language has more similiarities to Japanese: for example the possessive next to personal pronouns is often preserved in Hungarian (énnekem, énnálam stb.) (Japanese: no).
The study also includes a Japanese-Finnish-Hungarian comparative glossary, made using the comparative method. Some examples are:
| Japanese | Hungarian |
| ara "empty" | árva "orphan" |
| ushi "cattle" | üsző "calf" |
| kuro "black" | korom "soot" |
| sui "sour" | sav- "sour" |
| furi "to spin something" | forog "to spin" |
| voka "hill" | boka "ankle" |
Hungarian orientalist Vilmos Pröhle in 1917 and 1943 was on the same opinion. He considered the Japanese languages a part of or at least closely related to the Finno-Ugric language family. Ferenc Pap also examined the similarities between the two languages and published his work in 1942.
Izui Hisanosuke in his book among others connected Japanese yuki 'snow', Finnish and Estonian jää 'ice' and Hungarian jég 'ice' (Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian pronounce 'j' as /j/, similarly to the romaji 'y').
Lajos Kazár believed that both languages were of Uralic origin and in 1996 he published a linguistic comparaison of ancient Japanese and ancient Hungarian. Compared words include: amo 'mother' – eme- from which emse 'sow' evolved from; itosi 'beloved, kind' – ancient Hungarian ides, from which édes 'sweet' evolved from, cubo 'cooking vessel, pitcher' – csupor 'small cooking vessel, pint', among others.

## Other notable examples

Comparison of Vocabulary :
| Kanji | Romanji | Hungarian |
| 塩 'salt' | shio | só 'salt'; English pronunciation 'shoo' |
| ぐるぐる 'circling' | guruguru | gurul 'roll' |
| よい 'good' | yoi | jó 'good'; E. p. 'yoo' |
| 食む 'eat' | hamu | hamm 'yum' |
| ぽつん 'the falling of a droplet' | po tsun | pottyan 'fall, especially with a dim sound' ; E. p. 'potjan' |
| のそのそ 'slowly' | nosonoso | nosza 'go on!'; E. p. nosa |
| 白鳥 'swan' pronounced as 'haktjo' | | hattyú 'swan'; E. p. hatju |
| 鵞鳥 'goose' | gachō | gácsér 'drake; E.p gacher |