Sumerian-Hungarian Connection: Is this taken seriously?

[mesopotamiankaraite]

I was researching theories on languages that Sumerian can possibly be related to and I was surprised to see a lot of people claiming a connection with the Sumerian linguistic isolate and the Uralic Hungarian language.

I'm wondering, do any respected modern scholars think that this is a possibility and if so, how and why?

So far, I haven't found much reputable websites that give this hypothesis any credibility. For example, I've seen this theory on a reptilian-enthusiast website, a Hungarian nationalist website, a Huffington Post article talking about how Jobbik (an extreme political party from Hungary) claims that Hungarians are Sumerians and Jesus Christ was also a Sumerian but he was kidnapped by Jewish slave traders (yes people actually believe this garbage), and finally a conspiracy forum. I haven't found a single respected modern scholar's paper on this hypothesis, leading me to believe that no one takes it seriously.

[enkur]

The Hungarian as well as the Turkish and probably the Finnish languages have something in common with the Sumerian one as far as they are agglutinating languages. I think there were some discussions on that topic in enenuru. Apart from the ridiculous above-mentioned websites, however, I have heard about many word examples coming from these countries which may have some etymological connections with the Sumerian. I don't speak these languages to judge but I think that the Western science also neglects (deliberately or not) certain facts. Accidentally or not, there are here and there etymological connections with Sumerian in many languages which have nothing to do with that ancient isolate language. For example, the Russian "люди" (pronounced "lyudi") and the German, "Leute", both words for "people" in these languages have something to do with Sumerian LU2 (human). I also tend to see the Sumerian DAM (spouse) echoing in "dame" (lady) however ridiculous it may sound to somebody. Anyway.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Hey guys -


Well good questions mesopotamiankaraite. This was touched on a little at the following thread, but let me answer in more detail below.


enenuru.proboards.com/thread/508/sumerian-akkadian-decipherment


So the main position of scholars in the field has been, and remains, that Sumerian is a "language isolate" with no known relatives. The origin of the Sumerians, where they came from, and to what other languages their language should relate to, has been a major problem for Sumerologists and this problem is explored in the book "The Sumerian Problem." The book never really solves these problems and most scholars today feel that is where things are at - unsolved, and perhaps, unsolvable.

www.amazon.com/Sumerian-Problem-Major-Issues-History/dp/0471449407/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425587409&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Sumerian+problem


There is a singular important scholar who would like to propose that Sumerian does in fact belong to a known language family, indeed Uralic, this scholar is Simo Parpola working from Helsinki, Finland. Parpola is a recognized genius of Assyrian textual material, and has lead studies of Assyrian for some time. However, outside of this focus, his ideas are very controversial. His proposal that Sumerian should be understood as belonging to the Uralic language family is quite new, but will likely meet with strong resistance from the rest of the field. Evaluating the validity of Parpola's claims about Sumerian would require a very high degree of knowledge, and students such as us may better off focusing energy elsewhere for the time being.


Nonetheless, at the following link Parpola present an overview of his idea, in case you are curious. I suggest extreme caution at accepting this proposal currently:

users.cwnet.com/millenia/Sumerian-Parpola.htm


Some of the work which Parpola has contributed and which everyone agrees is important and solid are available at the following website:

oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp/lettersqueriesandreports/index.html

[enki]

In Sumerian mythology Enki is the god who created humans. Well, in Hungarian ÉN KI means I (am) Who. Interestingly according to the Bible when Moses met with God in the burning bush the god introduced himself as 'I am That'. Moreover everybody = mindEnki in Hungarian, where 'mind' is all/every, so everybody =all(of us is)ENKI/everyENKI...

Enki lived in Abzu, an aquifer from which all life was believed to stem..'hAbzó' means frothing/churning/lathery in Hungarian.

Abrakadabra: According to John M. Allegro it is a mystical formula that was chanted during religious practice in ancient Sumer. In Hungarian 'Ábrák a Dobra!' means (Lets bring) Figures onto the drums! (We know that standing waves make figures on the surfaces of drums from eg. sands...)

Cities of Sumerians:

Eridu - Eredő means source, a place where something originates
Kish - Kis means small, little (Kis is also a frequent family name)
Ur - Úr means lord
Uruk - Uruk means "their lord", Urak means lords
Nippur - Nap Úr (Lord Sun)
Lagas - Lakás (apartment/flat)

In the epic of Gilgamesh he sets out on a series of journeys to search for his ancestor Utnapishtim. In Hungarian 'Út Napisten' means 'Path Sun-god'. Sun god in Sumerian is Utu so it can be 'Utu Napisten', meaning 'Sungod called Utu'.

Although it is not Sumerian, it is worth to mention that morning is reggel in Hungarian, which sounds as "Re kel", where Re is the Sun god of the ancient Egypts and kel = rise, so 'Re kel' (reggel=morning) means 'Re rises'.

[Salmu]

I am going to jump in here about two things (someone else can deal with the weakness of comparing randomly selected vocabulary from separate language groups that sound similar).

First.
Abracadabra is not attested as a magical formula before the Roman period. It is contested linguistically and may be related to a Semitic source, probably Hebrew or Aramaic. It is not attested two thousand or more years earlier in Sumerian.

Number two is that John Allegro was removed from the ranks of reliable or even nominally tolerable academics in the late 1960s, fifty years ago, after he wrote some very fanciful and linguistically unsound books. His linguistic comparisons are very broad, often based on words looking superficially similar and only attractive if you do not read the languages he cites. Very much like the new generation of pseudo archaeologists, many of whom love his work.

[Salmu]

As an afterthought, I would also like to add that sunrise in ancient Egyptian was usually expressed by the root ḫ' (loosely 'kha'). It is attested in the titulary of most pharaohs. I am unaware of any word 'kel', particularly since Egyptian, like Semitic languages, does not employ vowels between consonants.

[enki]

In 're kel' I didn't say that it was in Egyptian! I actually think that 'Re' of Egyptians was somehow built in the Hungarian word 'reggel' 're kel'. This means that those people who spoke ancient Hungarian were in connection with the ancient Egyptians...

[enki]

Abracadabra: did Hungarian participate in the contest you refer to?

[us4-he2-gal2]

enki:



Welcome to enenuru. Well, for a general statement about Sumerian as an isolate language, see my post above March 2015. Although I do think that the language family of Sumerian has not been identified, so it remains a language isolate, this does not mean that Sumerian never took on loan words from other languages, of course, all languages do this. To take on loan words does not mean that the two language come from the same language family, it means that peoples of different languages interacted with each other and borrowed words from each other. Gordon Whitaker has written about the presence of Indo-European words which made their way into Sumerian, a controversial topic.

In any case, I want to encourage you in your investigation of Mesopotamian languages and it is a fair intellectual exercise to compare these languages with Hungarian. This does not mean that the end results of such an effort contain truth in the final analysis. To be successful in such an effort, I think you would need a very long study period, and would need probably to gain some level of comprehension in Sumerian and Akkadian. Here are some issues with the data you have put forward so far:

- Abracadabra: I agree that abracadabra is not Sumerian. Sumerians had their own 'abracadabra formulae' which was a 'mumbo jumbo' 'hocus pocus' other their own sort, and sounded nothing like this.

- Nippur: is the name of the Sumerian city yes , but Nippur is the Semitic (Akkadian) spelling which modern scholars also use. Despite this, the Sumerian spelling for the city was actually Nibru.

- Utnapishtim: This is the Akkadian name for the flood hero, the Sumerian is Ziudsura. While the Sumerian name means something like 'long lived' , the Akkadian Utnapistim is translated sometimes as 'he found life' (the main word being napishtim 'life'). The Semitic Akkadian sun god is Shamash, not Utu.



Some of the names of early cities you mention, i.e. Eridu, and do in fact come from 'an earlier linguistic substrate' scholars usually say, that is, they do not appear to be Sumerian words. However, this does not mean that they are Hungarian words or proto-Hungarian words necessarily. There are some 6,500 language spoken today, how many of these languages have a word spelled Ur, like the city of Ur? Let's guess maybe 500. So..you see where this can be problematic.