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te

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Pronunciation

Forms

te[1] The accusative is téged, in popular and familiar speech also tégedet; the other cases are expressed by adverbs with personal endings (neked, benned, általad).[2][3] Old spellings include ty in the Jókai Codex, thew (about 1467) and teh (1528).[4][5] In Szeged and the neighbouring dialects te is “you too” is contracted to tés.[6]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Uralic *tinä (“you (singular)”),[1] one of the words Hungarian inherited from the Uralic period.[7][5][8][9] Its cognates are found across the family: Komi-Zyrian te, Udmurt ton, Western Mari təń, Erzya ton, Moksha ton, Finnish sinä and Northern Sami dǭn, and, among the Samoyedic languages, Selkup tat.[5][4] In Finnish and Estonian the initial /t/ became /s/ before /i/.[4][9]

The vowels of the cognates cannot be traced back to a single form: Hungarian, Komi, Udmurt, Mari and Finnish point to a front vowel, Mordvin, Sami and Samoyedic to a back one.[9][4] TESz, MSzFE and ÚESz therefore suppose that the Uralic singular pronouns had two variants, a front-vowelled one for “you here” and Proto-Uralic *to for “you there”, in the way that the Uralic demonstratives distinguished “this” and “that” (compare Finnish tämä and tuo).[9][5][8] In the end it is the same word as the plural pronoun ti.[7][5][8]

The modern vowel is explained in two ways.[4][5] Either the original /i/ was kept, because the pronoun is a stressed word of one syllable (as in ki and mi), and later opened to /e/; or a pronoun-forming suffix with /ŋ/ was added to the stem, and the diphthong that resulted was simplified, shortened and opened.[7][5][8] The ⟨g⟩ of téged goes back to that Ugric suffix (compare engem), and its final ⟨d⟩ is the possessive ending of the second person singular.[7][9][5] The /n/ of the old forms tenmagad and tennen, which is also seen in several cognates, is a Uralic pronoun-forming suffix; the latter repeats it.[7][9][5] TESz rejects the view that this /n/ is a Finno-Ugric genitive ending.[4]

Since the 19th century the pronoun has been compared with Indo-European and Altaic pronouns of the second person.[9] ÚESz and Zaicz mention Yukaghir, Mongolian and Latin tu as possible relations, and TESz leaves these links for further study.[5][8][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

ÚESz dates the first record to the early 13th century, in the Königsberg Fragment, where the word appears both as the pronoun “you” and as a possessive (“your”), and where the accusative tegud (modern téged) is also found.[5] TESz, which dated the fragment to about 1350, gave as the first record the Old Hungarian Lament of Mary of about 1300: the werud hullothya en iunhum olelothya, “the shedding of your blood is the killing of my heart”, with te before a possessed noun.[4][9]

Semantic evolution

The two uses, the pronoun proper and the possessive placed before a noun with a possessive ending, are both found from the beginning.[4][5] The emphatic forms ten magad (Jókai Codex) and tennen (Vienna Codex) meant “you yourself” and later also “yours”;[5][2] tenmagad survives as a rare literary form beside magad.[5][2]

In the Transylvanian court records of the 16th–17th centuries te is common in address, usually followed by a noun or an adjective that names or describes the person spoken to.[10] The modern dictionary describes te as the pronoun of familiar speech: between intimates, to children, within close communities, from men to girls and younger women in the villages, and in prayer.[2] In some dialects te is also used before a plural noun in addressing several people, where the standard language has ti.[2][11]

The verb tegez “to address someone as te” was formed in the language reform from a stem abstracted from téged, and is recorded from 1795; earlier attempts such as tégetni (1767), tegetni (1775) and tezni (1799) did not last.[4][5]

Timeline

  • early 13th century – te and tegud in the Königsberg Fragment.[5]
  • c. 1300 – the werud “your blood” in the Old Hungarian Lament of Mary.[4]
  • after 1372 (copy of about 1448) – ty and ten magadot “yourself” in the Jókai Codex.[5]
  • after 1416 (copy of about 1450) – tėnėn (tennen) “you yourself” in the Vienna Codex.[5][4]
  • 1767 – tégetni “to address as te” in Pápai Páriz's dictionary.[4]
  • 1795 – tegezni, the verb that lasted.[4][5]
  • 1844 – tegeződés “addressing one another as te”; the verb tegeződik follows in 1879.[5][4]

Meanings

Pronoun

  1. you: the second person singular, the person spoken to in familiar address: Te mit gondolsz erről?[2][1]
  2. In address, calling someone's attention, often followed by a name or a word that describes the person: Te, nézd csak![2][10]
  3. Before a noun with a second person possessive ending, stressing the possessor: your: a te könyved.[2][10][4]
  4. (dialectal) In addressing several people, before a plural noun or a noun with a plural possessive ending, as ti.[2][11]

Word family

  • téged
  • tegez
  • tegeződik
  • tennen
  • ti
  • Finnish sinä

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Bárczi, Géza; Országh, László (eds.) (1959–1962), A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára, 7 vols., Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó; online at ertelmezo.oszk.hu
  3. ^ Czuczor, Gergely; Fogarasi, János (1862–1874), A magyar nyelv szótára, 6 vols., Pest: Emich Gusztáv / Athenaeum
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Benkő, Loránd (ed.) (1967–1976), A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára, 3 vols., Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 3, 869
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Gerstner, Károly (ed.) (2006–), Új magyar etimológiai szótár, Budapest: Nyelvtudományi Kutatóközpont; online at uesz.nytud.hu
  6. ^ Bálint, Sándor (1957), Szegedi szótár, 2 vols., Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 2, 556
  7. ^ a b c d e Benkő, Loránd (ed.) (1967–1976), A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára, 3 vols., Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó
  8. ^ a b c d e Zaicz, Gábor (ed.) (2006), Etimológiai szótár: magyar szavak és toldalékok eredete, Budapest: Tinta Könyvkiadó
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h Lakó, György (ed.) (1967–1978), A magyar szókészlet finnugor elemei, 3 vols., Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 3, 621
  10. ^ a b c Szabó T., Attila (ed.) (1975–2014), Erdélyi magyar szótörténeti tár, 14 vols., Bukarest: Kriterion / Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó / Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület
  11. ^ a b B. Lőrinczy, Éva (ed.) (1979–2010), Új magyar tájszótár, 5 vols., Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 5, 319