This project is funded by an APART-GSK grant by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The project duration is 1 May 2021–30 April 2023.

The aim of the project is the reconstruction Hungarian historical phonology, based on a critical analysis of the early Iranian loanwords to Hungarian and the common vocabulary of Hungarian and the Ob-Ugric languages Khanty and Mansi.  These three languages have traditionally been assumed to form the Ugric branch of the Uralic (Finno-Ugric) family.

The project tackles several open questions in Uralic and historical linguistics. In the project, the suggested Ugric cognates, the shared Iranian and Turkic loanword layers of these languages, and words that have been considered derivatives on the Proto-Ugric level will be analysed critically, with the aim to distinguish true cognates from false etymologies and possible substrate words. Also, a new stratigraphy of the earliest Iranian loanwords into Hungarian will be presented and the phonology of the loanwords will be compared with the developments attested in the Ugric lexicon. Based on the results of the etymological research, an outline of historical phonology of Hungarian will be published, showing the regular developments from Proto-Uralic to Proto-Ugric and from Proto-Ugric to the earliest phases of Hungarian.

Ugric etymological database is currently developed.

[Click here to view sample entry of the database]