Hungarian

Hungarian is a Uralic language unrelated to most other languages in Europe. The Hungarian name for the language is magyar.

Hungarian is one of the small number of modern European languages that do not belong to the Indo-European language family and often sounds completely foreign to speakers of Indo-European languages. It is commonly estimated to be one of the most difficult European languages for foreigners to learn well.

There are about 14.5 million native speakers, of whom 9.5-10 million live in modern-day Hungary. Outside Hungary the largest group lives in Romania, where there are approximately 1.4 million Hungarians. Hungarian-speaking people are also to be found in Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine, Croatia, Austria, and Slovenia. As with many European languages, there are a few hundred thousand speakers of Hungarian in the United States as well.

See also:

bbc.co.uk Country Profile - Hungary