<h2class="episodetitle">A Brief History of the Hungarian Language</h2>
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<h2class="sectiontitle">Asia</h2>
<p>Hunagarians are really Russians!! That may be a controversial statement for many Hungarians, including myself, but there is at least some truth to it because the people we know as Hungarians, actually migrated to Europe from the Uralic region of what we now see as modern-day Russia. The Urals, in fact, are essentially the border between European Russia and Asian Russia.</p>
<p>Of course, this migration took place before the establishment of modern-day Russia and so modern day Hungarians identify themselves more with their neighbouring European countries, with the possible exception of the Czechs and Slovakians who let us down a bit in 1956 (sorry my Czech friends, that is a little bit tongue in cheek)!</p>
<p>This is further demonstrated in the fact that Hungarians converted to Catholicism under the rulership of Saint Stephen (Szent Istvan in Hungarian) in 1001. I don't want to go too deeply into the political history of the country here, but one of the consquences of Hungary's Uralic origins is the language which many people find very difficult because unlike languages such as English, French or even Russian, Hungarian does not belong to one of the three major European language groups which are Germanic, Romantic and Slavic. It belongs to the Ugric family of languages which also includes Finnish and Estonian as well as several languages spoken by minority groups in the northern parts of Scandinavia and Russia.</p>
<p>Langfocus have posted a video on YouTube that gives some of the background on the origins of Hungarian which is really interesting.</p>
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