Language Barriers: Understanding Hungarian and Finnish

Have you ever heard a Hungarian speaking to a Finnish person and wondered if the latter would understand half of it? Similarly, would an English speaker understand half of a conversation in Hindi or Persian? The answer is a definitive no, and this article explores why this is the case.

Language Roots and Understanding

While Hungarian and Finnish are spoken in geographically close regions, they belong to distinct language families. Despite sharing roots from an ancient language, they have diverged so much that a native speaker of one would struggle to understand the other. It is even more challenging for an average English speaker to understand Albanian than a Finnish person to grasp Hungarian.

The vocabulary that remains similar between these two languages is so obscure that one needs to study etymology to recognize it. The shared roots are more symbolic than practical, as most of the cognates have become unrecognizable over the centuries.

Context and Cultural Nuances

Understanding a language is not just about recognizing words; it also involves grasping the cultural context. In Tallinn, for instance, I encountered a situation where someone said "HúSZ" in Hungarian, but it was actually "KUUS" in Estonian, which is a close relative to Finnish. This situation highlights the importance of context in language understanding.

While there might be a few rare words that remain similar after thousands of years, these are far fewer compared to the similarities between English, Latin, Greek, and Italian. For many native speakers, these languages share much more in common than Hungarian and Finnish do.

Language Intelligibility and Cognitive Perception

The brain often plays tricks, making native speakers believe they understand a conversation they don't. This can be particularly noticeable in situations where a person is standing in a queue and overhearing a conversation in an unfamiliar language. Several times, I have experienced my brain telling me that a conversation in front of me is in either Finnish or Estonian. This phenomenon can be perplexing, as the languages are ancient and distant.

As a native Finnish speaker with knowledge of English, Swedish, Russian, Norwegian, Danish, and some knowledge of Romance and Slavic languages, I can only scratch the surface of understanding Hungarian. Common international loan words are the only things I can recognize, with no comprehension of the rest of the language.

Conclusion

The complexities of language understanding are not limited to Hungarian and Finnish alone. Many languages, despite being related, have evolved independently to the point where mutual intelligibility is minimal. Understanding a language involves both the ability to recognize words and the broader context of culture and history. As such, it is essential to appreciate the nuanced differences and the challenges these differences pose.

Understanding and recognizing such barriers is crucial for effective communication and for appreciating the rich tapestry of human languages. Whether it's speaking Hungarian to a Finnish person or listening to Hindi in a crowded place, the language barrier prevails, reminding us of the vast and fascinating diversity of human communication.