>Vocalic shifts sound more weird: why Franz > Fere´nc < Fera¨nts>, >instead of Franc?
Ferenc /'fær-ænts/. Both vowels are /æ/, as in British English "have, has,
hat". The actual /e/ vowel is always written é (with 'accent aigu').
(The short form of Ferenc, as a nick, is: Feri /'færi/.)
In more recent loanies, franc-- /frÉ"nts/, for the initial cluster fr- there is
no longer any need for an "auxiliary" vowel:
e.g. franc in idiomatic expressions with _a francba_ (verbatim "in(to) the
'frantz'", something colloquial, showing annoyance; meaning, according
to the context something like "shucks!", "shit!", "the devil should take
him/it" (e.g. hagyad a francba), "(you) go to <whichever pejorative or
4-letter-word>" (e.g. meny a francba; a franc egye meg, where franc
seems to be a euphemism for "the devil") Etc. I don't know the etymology
of this phrase (I don't possess any etymological dictionary for Hungarian),
but I assume its origin is the German 1st name Franz (via Austria).
('France' as its origin doen't seem probable to me.)
Then, of cours, common, everyday's words such as the following:
frakció "faction" & "fraction"
frakk "frock"
francia "French"
Franciaország "France" (verbatim "French land")
frank "Frankish"; someone from Franconia or from the Frankish Empire
frank (money: Swiss, French etc. franc)
fráter "frater, fra, monk; (fig.) brother, guy, bloke, chap, lad"
frázis "phrase, clause"
frekvencia "frequency"
freskó(festészet) "mural, fresco" (painting)
fricska "fillip = Nasenstüber"
frigy "union, federation, league"
Frigyes "Frederic, Friedrich, Fritz, Bedr^ich"
friss /friSS/ "fresh" (and its noun and deverbal derivates)
frizura "hair-do"
front "front"
frottÃr "Frottier"
fröccs "squirt; spatter; spray; (Austr.) Spritz, Gespritzter = (Germ.) Schorle", "frizzante" (and its derivates)
Fradi /frÉ"di/ nickname of the soccer team/club "Ferencváros Budapest"
(Ferencváros "Franzstadt")
The initial cluster fr- wouldn't have been possible about 800-1000
years ago. The same applies to clusters such as sk- (hence iskola
"school"), st- (hence István "Stephen"), stl- (oszlop < Slav stlp "pole"),
str- (eszterga "(turning) lathe" < Slavic approx. {strung-})
pr-/br- (barlang < Slav. brlog- "grotto; lair; recess"), gr- (görög "Greek"),
kr- (Körös, a river, called CriS in Romanian and Kreisch in German).
In contrast, final consonantic clusters are abundand in Old Hungarian
as well (incl. plenty of IE -rt, -rd, -lt, -ld, -nt, -nd, -sd, -zsd, -st). The idiom was influenced by Scythian/Persian dialects before the arrival
of Old Hungarians speaker groups in their today's territory; the language
has some important vocabulary consisting of important words of Alan
and Persian origins (e.g. words signifying "god, God; devil; some
demons; gold; silver; lady; customs = douane; bridge; sword; comb etc.
Some of these words are phonetically & semantically quite close to their
Ossetic counterparts).
George