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JÓZSEF ZSENGELLÉR
radix;°* and to Hiphil and Hophal as parallels of the causative conjugation of
Hungarian verbs, are the only specific comparisons between the two lan¬
guages. Pereszlényi possibly assumed his readers would be less familiar with
the nuances of Hebrew grammar than the readers of Sylvester, Szenczi Molnar
or Komaromi Csipkés. Having no other work of Pereszlényi’s at our disposal,
it would be unfair to say anything more about his knowledge of Hebrew. His
Grammatica seems to be a genuine schoolbook meant for Hungarian students,
though it always compares Hungarian grammatical elements with Latin ones,
and describes some grammatical features more clearly and originally than any
previous grammar."
To conclude our survey of grammarians we should throw some light on the
activities of Miklós Tótfalusi Kis (1650-1702) who commenced studying theol¬
ogy in the Protestant school of Nagyenyed", then went on to learn typography
for nine years in Amsterdam. Miklós Tótfalusi Kis founded a printing house
in Kolozsvár in 1693.° He made a revision of the Hungarian translation of the
Bible (Amsterdam, 1683) which was highly criticised because of its modifica¬
tions of the previous editions. Tótfalusi wrote an Apologia Bibliorum in 1697
in which he defended his work. Ihe third part ofthis bookis called Ratiocinatio
de orthographia (Orthographical rationale);” it is not a systematic grammar and
only the orthographical problems of Hungarian are discussed, nevertheless it
utilises several other grammatical features of Hungarian.
64 PERESZLENYI, Grammatica, 74. “ob quam causam etiam Hebraei pro radice ponunt tertiam
personam.” This description is taken from Szenczi Molnar, Novae Grammaticae, 86. Cf. Dan,
Robert, Szenci Molnar Albert és Conrad Vietor, in S. Csanda — B. Keserti (ed.), Szenci Molnar
Albert és a magyar késé-reneszdnsz, Szeged, MTA Irodalomtudomanyi Intézet, 1978, 286.
“..habent Ungari verba Mandativa... correspondentque Hebraicis verbis in Hiphil.”; “Item
quaedam, quae significant actionem ejusdem in leipsum, ficut apud Hebraeos verba Hophal,...”
PERESZLENYI, Grammatica, 114.
The major achievment of Pereszlenyi in describing the Hungarian language was his morphological
analysis. Cf. Cser, Andras, Pal Pereszlényi and the development of morphological analysis in the
early grammars of Hungarian, Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55 (2008) 3-21.
Today’s Aiud in Transylvania, Romania. Egidiopolis or Brucla in Latin and StrafSburg am Mie¬
resch in German.
Clausenburg in German, today’s Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania, Romania. This was the first print¬
ing house in Hungary printing Hebrew books. Cf. DÁN, Róbert, A héber könyv Magyarországon,
in D. D. Frank (ed.), Dán Róbert, Fejezetek a héber könyv történetéből Magyarországon, Budapest,
Jordan Euro-Atlanti, 2010, 15-20, especially 16.
© TOTFALUsI Kis, Miklés, Apologia Bibliorum, Claudiopoli, 1697.
ZSILINSZKY, Eva (ed.), Tótfalusi Kis Miklós: Számvetés a helyesírásról. Ratiocinatio de ortho¬
graphia, Budapest, Magyar Nyelvtudományi Társaság, 2011, 24—96. Ihe original work has no
page numbering, therefore the page numbering of this reprint edition will be used from now
on. (The reprint text is on even pages, the Hungarian translation is on odd pages).
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