Hungarian Historical Phonology én

én 'I; ich'

First attestation/Old Hungarian data

13th c. en (EWUng 321-322, s.v. én)

Important dialectal forms

[coming]

Uralic/Ugric/Pre-Hungarian reconstruction

[coming]

Loan etymology

None suggested

Cognates suggested in earlier research

Mansi: South (TJ) εm, East (KL) äm, West (P) am, North (So) am 'I'

See MSzFE (153–155, s.v. én) for the rest of the Uralic 1sg personal pronouns without the word-initial vowel.

Commentary

It is commonly assumed (MSzFE 153–155, s.v. én; Honti 2012; 2017: 103–113) that the 1SG pronouns in Hungarian and Mansi represent a common innovation. However, this can hardly be considered a Proto-Ugric development, as there is no trace of a personal pronoun with *ä- in Khanty. It should also be noted that it is not completely clear that the Hungarian and Mansi pronouns go back to a unitary Proto-Ugric form: there is no clear way to connect Hungarian n and Mansi m. It remains a possibility that Hungarian én : en- and Mansi *äm are parallel formations of the same stem.

Honti (2012: 126) reconstructs the 1sg personal pronoun of Proto-Ugric as *män, ?*ämn-.

It is possible that the Hu and Ms pronouns reflect a Uralic demonstrative pronominal stem e-, although the details are uncertain and this has been criticized by Honti (2017), among others. Honti cites Rédei (1967), who considers it improbable that the old 1sg pronoun would have been replaced by a new one based on a demonstrative pronoun.

Conclusion

[coming]

References

Honti 2012: 126, 128

Honti 2017: 103–113

EWUng: 321-322, s.v. én: old opaque compound including a PU pronoun

MSzFE: 153-154, s.v. én: PUg derivative of a PU pronoun

Rédei 1967

Rédei 1998

Sipos 1991