The secrets of the Old Hungarian Alphabet

Aside from the adventurous state founding and the war ridden walls of the castles and hill forts of Hungary, we have one more precious relic from long ago: the Old Hungarian Alphabet. There are numerous tall tales surrounding the alphabet, and half of them do not even come close to reality. Érdekes Portál has collected the most important and real facts that you need to know about the Old Hungarian Alphabet.

The article says that if you read this introduction to one of the most important Hungarian treasures, you will understand why so many people are interested in it and why it has to be kept alive as a cultural heritage.

In Hungarian, it is called ‘rovásírás’, translating to ‘score writing’. The name comes from the method of ‘writing’: the letters are not written with pen and on paper, parchment, but scored into wood or stone with a knife. They look a lot like geographical shapes rather than letters.

The Hun origins

According to medieval tales, the Szeklers (Székelys) were Huns, and the Hungarians were only related to Huns, thus the Szeklers transmitted the Scythian-Hun alphabet to the Hungarians. Most historians agree that the Old Alphabet came into being in the 9-10^th century. This means that the Hungarian tribes arriving at the Pannonian Basin were the ones who brought the signs to the region. This is despite the fact that the first indirect remnants of the Old Alphabet can be pinned to the end of the 15^th century. However, there are direct proofs for the existence of the Alphabet from the 16^th century.

There’s a twist, however: historians would link score writing to the Göktürks or the Avars, instead of the Huns. There Hungarian linguists in the 17-19^th centuries who even doubted that the writing system is actually ancient. They believed it to be the craftwork of 16^th century Humanists. Late Humanists campaigned to spread the Old Alphabet, with the aim of convincing everyone to shift to the Old Alphabet.

The first linguistic inquiries

In the 16^th century, linguists have started to examine the languages spoken by different nations. Not just the Hebrew, Greek and Latin grammars were prepared in those times, but also the first vernacular grammars. The first systematised Hungarian grammar can be linked to János Sylvester, from 1539. The descriptive approach is only one aspect of inquiry; the other ones are the historical tradition, the activity of the language or how much it resembles those languages that have important roles in culture transfer. It was revealed that there are more declensions in Hungarian than in Latin, and also Latin is missing the articles.

János Telegdy and János Baranyai Decsi

János Telegdy wrote a book about the Old Hungarian Alphabet in 1598, the preface of which was written by János Baranyai Decsi. Although not a single printed version has resurfaced since then, we can conclude from 17-18th-century sources that it was quite popular and it had a great impact on the views of contemporaries. According to the preface, the Old Alphabet is proof for the ancient origins of Hungarians, and the right-to-left writing is proof for the connection between the Hebrew and Hungarian languages. They thought that our Scythian “ancestors” have taken up writing from the Hebrews. With this form of writing, such Hungarian letters were created that not even the French, Germans or other big European nations had. Thus Humanists repeated what Kézai ascertained: the Szeklers inherited the Old Alphabet from the Huns.