 The development of the Hungarian language started around 800 BC with the withdrawal of the grasslands and the parallel southward migration of the nomadic Ugric groups . The history of the ancient Magyars during the next thousand years is uncertain ; they lived in the steppes but the location of their <unk> is subject to scholarly debates . According to one theory , they initially lived east of the Urals and migrated west to " Magna Hungaria " by 600 AD at the latest . Other scholars say Magna Hungaria was the Magyars ' original homeland , from where they moved either to the region of the Don River or towards the Kuban River before the 830s AD . Hundreds of loan words adopted from Chuvash @-@ type Turkic languages prove the Magyars were closely connected to Turkic peoples . Byzantine and Muslim authors regarded them as a Turkic people in the 9th and 10th centuries . 
