Phonological history of Hungarian

There are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Uralic languages. For example, Hungarian á corresponds to Khanty o in certain positions, and Hungarian h corresponds to Khanty x, while Hungarian final z corresponds to Khanty final t. These can be seen in Hungarian ház ("house") and Khanty xot ("house"), or Hungarian száz ("hundred") and Khanty sot ("hundred").

Hungarian and Khanty are closely connected, either genealogically or as part of a language area. The distance between Hungarian and the Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular. The relationship is most apparent when comparing all Uralic languages together, for then individual idiosyncrasies are averaged out, but in this article Hungarian is only compared with Finnish and Estonian (two Finnic languages).


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