Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian (EDH)

1. Introduction
ALFRÉD TÓTH : ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF HUNGARIAN (EDH)
8. Bantu and Hungarian
8. Bantu and Hungarian
The Reverend W. Wanger, author of many publications and scientific grammars of the Ntu (Bantu)
languages, esp. Zulu, wrote in the introduction of his book “Comparative Lexical Study of Sumerian
and Ntu (Bantu)”: “Sumerian can be shown to be ‘the Sanscrit’ for the immense Ntu family of
languages” (Wanger 1935, p. xxxvii). In other words: Since Sumerian is the oldest testified language of
the world, it can be taken as an existing basis instead of the reconstructed proto-pseudo languages
(cf. also Marácz 2006) like Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Finno-Ugric, Proto-Altaic, etc. Wanger further
mentions, that therefore there was no need for him either to reconstruct a hypothetical Proto-Bantu,
since he compares the real Sumerian with the real Bantu tongues and since in many cases esp. Ntu
conserves both the form and the meaning of words not only similarly but identical (cf. f. ex. Wanger
1935, p. 79, here no. 47). From this point of view, the often heard counter-argument against comparing
Sumerian with one of the living languages is pointless.
The following map shows a very rough distribution of African languages:
___________________________________________________________________________________
© Copyright Mikes International 2001-2007, Alfréd Tóth 2007 - 238 -