Introduction

In my "Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian" (EDH-1 and EDH-2), I have shown the genetical relationship between Sumerian, Hungarian and the following languages and language families: Finno- Ugric, Caucasian, Bantu, Etruscan, Tibeto-Burman, Munda, Dravidian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Austronesian, Mayan, Egyptian, and Hebrew.

Quite astonishing is the relationship between Sumerian-Hungarian and Mayan, since up to now I did not have any studies available that would provide the North American link between the Old World and the South American testimonies. By chance, I recently found the extensive and thorough study by the late UCLA professor Dr. Otto J. von Sadovszky (1925-2004) who published in 1996 the summary of his decades-long investigations of what he called the "Cal-Ugrian Hypothesis". According to von Sadovszky, Ob-Ugrian tribes wandered around 500 B.C. via the Bering Strait in an area that comprises today the American states of Oregon and Northern California and formed the Penutian language family with its main branches the Costanoan, Miwokan, Wintuan, Maiduan and Yokutsan groups that are practically extinct now.

Von Sadovszky does not only give exhaustive comparative lists of Ob-Ugrian (Vogul, Ostyak and Hungarian) and Penutian cognates, but adduces a complete historical grammar and gives the historical, archeological and ethnographical contexts of the "Cal-Ugrian" language family. Since EDH-1 and EDH-2 are also based on the Sumerian-Hungarian sound-laws given in Gostony's (1975) with his 1042 etymologies, we add here "EDH-3" as a comparative study of Hungarian, Sumerian and Penutian in accordance with the basic methodology given in Tóth (2007). We therefore compare Sumerian and Hungarian on the one side - based on sound-laws - and Sumerian- Hungarian and Penutian on the other side - also based on sound-laws, hence three languages in order to maximally reduce the change of mistaken etymologies in diachronic linguistics.

Our present study thus presents the up to now lacking link between Europe and South America. That such a link must have existed, was recognized very early, but is accepted since the "cross-continental" studies by Morris Swadesh established since the 40ies and collected in Swadesh (1971). Since not only the Samoyed languages, but also Yukaghir belongs probably to the Uralic language family (Collinder 1940, 1965), this family covers an area that goes roughly speaking from Finland to the South of the Bering Strait. Moreover, Heinrich Werner showed the Urverwandtschaft between Yenissean and the Na-Dene macrofamily (Werner 2004), and already Shafer had shown that there is a genetical relationship between Athapaskan, Uto-Aztecan and Siberian as well as Paleo-Siberian languages (Shafer 1952, 1964). According to Karl Bouda, Yenissean belongs also to the Uralic language family (Bouda 1957).