Hungarian is a member of the
Ugric languages, a sub-group of the Finno-Ugric language family, which
in turn is a branch of the Uralic languages. Connections between the Ugric
and Finnic languages were noticed in the 1670s and established, along
with the entire Uralic family, in 1717, although the classification of
Hungarian continued to be a matter of political controversy into the 18th
and even 19th centuries. Today the Uralic family is considered one of
the best demonstrated large language families, along with Indo-European
and Austronesian.