Intro

In the last culture and script story we talked about the old Turkic script. So this time let’s talk about the other script, which looks very like the old Turkic.

Old Hungarian Script and Old Turkic

The Old Hungarian script or Hungarian runes or Rovas script. Actually now we don’t figure out the precise date or origin of this script. But according to the studies of linguists, the Old Hungarian should be from the old Turkic script in around the 720s. During the 7th or 8th century in the background of Turkic expansion, the speakers of Proto-Hungarian would have come into contact with Turkic people. The historians also gave us some proof that showed there are numerous Turkic loanwords in Proto-Hungarian.

Compared with old Turkic script, both scripts have the same writing rules, like some consonants of old Hungarian script also had 2 forms, one to be used with the back vowels and another for front vowels. Then the writing direction was the same as well, both were written from right to left. Plus the pronunciations of the old Hungarian script and the old Turkic script also are similar.

Hungarian Latin Script

Although Hungary had their own script thousand years ago, the most familiar Hungarian script of today is Latin script in the 1000s with the coronation of Stephen I of Hungary, Hungary moved to become a kingdom from an alliance of mostly nomadic tribes. The Latin alphabet was adopted as an official script. But it does not mean that the Old Hungarian script was at the end. The old Hungarian script also existed as a part of folk art in the 17th century to the early 19th century in several areas.

But by the late Middle Ages, Hungary accepted the Western European religion and politics deeper and deeper, so the Latin alphabet had become the primary script in Hungary and squeezed the living space of the old Hungarian script. Fortunately, the old Hungarian script survived in the land of Székelys. This is a subgroup of the Hungarians in eastern Transylvania. Therefore, today, the old Hungarian script also is called Székely runes or Székely-Hungarian Rovás.

In Modern Time

Because this is a very ancient and traditional script, this script might be able to be the identity of Hungarian people and country. Beginning with Adorján Magyar in 1915, the script has been promulgated as a means for writing modern Hungarian. But on the Internet it seems that the old Hungarian script isn’t really and widely used in education, official documents or as a practical script in daily life. Maybe it’s more often used on the road signs today.