Sound Correspondences Between Finnish and Hungarian

Though Finnish and Hungarian are related languages, they are not as closely related as Finnish and Estonian. Nevertheless, they do not belong to the Indo-European language family. In fact, they are part of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. Let us illustrate three sound correspondences between Finnish and Hungarian.

Words with an initial p in Finnish sometimes correspond to an initial f in Hungarian:

pesä fészek (nest)
pilvi felhő (cloud)
puoli fél (half)
puu fa (tree)
pää fej (head)

Words with an initial k in Finnish sometimes correspond to an initial h in Hungarian:

kainalo hónalj (armpit)
kala hal (fish)
kolme három (three)
kuusi hat (six)
kuulo hallás (hearing)

Words with a word-final i in Finnish sometimes lack the vowel in Hungarian:

käsi kéz (hand)
mesi méz (honey)
sarvi szarv (horn)
talvi tél (winter)
vesi víz (water)

Sound correspondences between Finnish and Hungarian can be identified. The sound changes from /p/ to /f/ and /k/ to /h/ are examples of spirantization and the loss of word-final /i/ is an example of apocope. The examples illustrate that Finnish is more conservative than Hungarian. Viewed from another perspective, Hungarian is more innovative than Finnish.