information:classification
Vocabulary

During the first early phase of Hungarian language reforms (late 18th and early 19th centuries) more than ten thousand words were coined, several thousand of which are still actively used today (see also Ferenc Kazinczy, the leading figure of the Hungarian language reforms.) Kazinczy's chief goal was to replace existing words of German and Latin origins with newly created Hungarian words. As a result, Kazinczy and his later followers (the reformers) significantly reduced the formerly high ratio of words of Latin and German origins in the Hungarian language, which were related to social sciences, natural sciences, politics and economics, institutional names, fashion etc.Giving an accurate estimate for the total word count is difficult, since it is hard to define a "word" in agglutinating languages, due to the existence of affixed words and compound words. To obtain a meaningful definition of compound words, it is necessary to exclude compounds whose meaning is the mere sum of its elements. The largest dictionaries giving translations from Hungarian to another language contain 120,000 words and phrases (but this may include redundant phrases as well, because of translation issues). The new desk lexicon of the Hungarian language contains 75,000 words, and the Comprehensive Dictionary of Hungarian Language (to be published in 18 volumes in the next twenty years) is planned to contain 110,000 words. The default Hungarian lexicon is usually estimated to comprise 60,000 to 100,000 words. (Independently of specific languages, speakers actively use at most 10,000 to 20,000 words, with an average intellectual using 25,000 to 30,000 words.) However, all the Hungarian lexemes collected from technical texts, dialects etc. would total up to 1,000,000 words.

Parts of the lexicon can be organized using word-bushes (see an example on the right). The words in these bushes share a common root, are related through inflection, derivation and compounding, and are usually broadly related in meaning.

The basic vocabulary shares several hundred word roots with other Uralic languages like Finnish, Estonian, Mansi and Khanty. Examples are the verb él "live" (Finnish elää), the numbers kettő (2), három (3), négy (4) (cf. Mansi китыг kitig, хурум khurum, нила nila, Finnish kaksi, kolme, neljä, Estonian kaks, kolm, neli), as well as víz 'water', kéz 'hand', vér 'blood', fej 'head' (cf. Finnish and Estonian vesi, käsi, veri, Finnish pää, Estonian pea or pää).

Words for elementary kinship and nature are more Ugric, less r-Turkic and less Slavic. Words related to agriculture are about 50% r-Turkic and 50% Slavic; pastoral terms are more r-Turkic, less Ugric and less Slavic. Finally, Christian and state terminology is more Slavic and less r-Turkic. The Slavic is most probably proto-Slovakian and/or -Slovenian. This is easily understood in the Uralic paradigm, proto-Magyars were first similar to Ob-Ugors, who were mainly hunters, fishers and gatherers, but with some horses too. Then they accultured to Bulgarian r-Turks, so the older layer of agriculture words (wine, beer, wheat, barley etc.) are purely r-Turkic, and many terms of statesmanship and religion were, too.

Except for a few Latin and Greek loanwords, these differences are unnoticed even by native speakers; the words have been entirely adopted into the Hungarian lexicon. There are an increasing number of English loanwords, especially in technical fields and slang as well.

Calculating the percentile fractions of the origins of various words within a language is an essentially meaningless and impossible exercise. There is no definite set number of words within a language that can be tallied up, and other factors like the frequency of use and dialectal differences also affect the end result. An approximate estimate of the number of foreign loanwords in Hungarian can be established, as well as the general frequency of their usage.

According to estiamtes, the most numerous loanwords come from Slavic languages (1252 words of proven Slavic origin, around 484 universally used in all dialects of Hungarian, 694 in specific dialects only, and 74 obsolete words). An additional 382 words are classified as "possibly Slavic", 147 of them present in all dialects, 209 present in certain dialects, and 26 no longer in common use, bringing the final number of potentially Slavic loanwords in all dialects to 631, and the total number of potentially Slavic loanwords across all dialects to about 1634.

The second largest group of loanwords are made up of Turkic loanwords, which can be divided into pre-Conquest, and Ottoman layers, with the pre-Conquest words making up the absolute majority of them. Due to centuries of cohabitation with Turkic peoples such as the Volga Bulgars and Khazars, the exact origin of certain words can be hard to pin down. The number of Turkic loanwords can be difficult to enumerate from the pre-Conquest period due to a lack of written sources from R-Turkic languages from the period, and even later, but generally the number of Turkic loanwords are estimated to be between 300-500.

The third largest group is made up of German loanwords, which number around 400. These started appearing in the language as early as the 11th century, but became especially prominent during the Habsburg-era, starting in the 16th century.

A much smaller but also much older layer of loanwords are Iranian loanwords, which only number in the dozens but serve as an important layer of the vocabulary. These words include tehén (cow), tej (milk), asszony (married woman, wife), vám (tax), vár (fortress), vásár (market), üveg (glass) etc.

Other, mostly more technical, religious, or scholarly loanwords also numbering in the dozens are from Latin and Greek, while newer layers may include virtually any European language that Hungarian has been in contact with over the centuries.