At the end of the 18th century, the Hungarian intelligentsia suddenly awakened. She was awakened by Georg Bessenyei (Bessenyei György). In 1765, he ended up at the court of Empress Maria Theresa as part of a newly created detachment of Hungarian bodyguards. Here he became interested in reading the masterpieces of French literature.
(Georg Bessenay)
He unwittingly drew a parallel between Western and Hungarian culture. And experienced pain and shame. After all, the Hungarians did not have any national culture then. In fact, they did not have their own language either. The aristocracy spoke and wrote in French and German. Middle class - in Latin. Latin was the official language in Hungary and in the Holy Roman Empire of which it was a part. The Hungarian language was rarely used and mainly in the villages.
By all accounts, he was not suitable for writing literary and scientific works. Under the influence of Bessenei's ideas, Hungarian writers began to "revive" the Hungarian language. The most active role in this process was played by Ferenc Kazinczy. In 1788, Kazintsi, with the assistance of David Szabo and Janos Batsani, began publishing the first literary magazine in Hungarian.
(Ferenc Kazintsi)
The “revival” of the Hungarian language, first of all, consisted in the introduction of at least ten thousand “original Hungarian words” into it. "Primordial Hungarian words" were freshly invented neologisms. Coming up with new words was very difficult. It often turned out to be quite clumsy and caused fun throughout Europe. Sometimes, satirical magazines published cartoons of Ferenc Kazintsi, depicting him as a milestone on a donkey trying to climb Parnassus.
But still, gradually, neologisms began to penetrate into living speech. The new Hungarian language gained more and more adherents. As a result, in 1844, it was declared state and compulsory for use in all state institutions on the territory of Hungary.
In the 19th century, political disputes broke out over which language family the Hungarian language should be attributed to. The Hungarians did not want to consider their language similar to the languages of their neighbors. Although there are only 20 percent of "native Hungarian words". The rest is borrowing from Latin, German, French, Turkish and Slavic languages. They considered it most similar to the Khanty and Mansei languages …
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