Hungarian, or Magyar (magyar nyelv, pronounced [ˈmɒɟɒr ˈɲɛlv] ^ⓘ), is a Ugric language of the Uralic language family spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighboring countries. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary, it is also spoken by Hungarian communities in southern Slovakia, western Ukraine (Transcarpathia), central and western Romania (Transylvania), northern Serbia (Vojvodina), northern Croatia, northeastern Slovenia (Prekmurje), and eastern Austria (Burgenland).

It is also spoken by Hungarian diaspora communities worldwide, especially in North America (particularly the United States and Canada) and Israel. With 14 million speakers, it is the Uralic family's most widely spoken language.

Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family. Linguistic connections between Hungarian and other Uralic languages were noticed in the 1670s, and the family's existence was established in 1717. Hungarian is assigned to the Ugric branch along with the Mansi and Khanty languages of western Siberia (Khanty–Mansia region of North Asia). However, there is debate on whether that is a valid grouping. The classification of the Hungarian language as Uralic has historically been the subject of intense scholarly debate, with a number of prominent linguists arguing that Hungarian is a Turkic language. Historically, the language was written using the Old Hungarian Script, an alphabetic writing system born from the Old Turkic Script.

When the Samoyedic languages were determined to be part of the family, some linguists initially assumed that Finnic and Ugric were closer to each other than to the Samoyedic branch of the family. That is now frequently rejected.

The name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove (sg. Ǫgrinŭ) seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onoğur (which means 'ten arrows' or 'ten tribes').

There are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian /aː/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, and Hungarian /h/ corresponds to Khanty /x/, while Hungarian final /z/ corresponds to Khanty final /t/. For example, Hungarian ház [haːz] 'house' vs. Khanty xot [xot] 'house', and Hungarian száz [saːz] 'hundred' vs. Khanty sot [sot] 'hundred'. The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular.

Some alternative theories suggest that the ancestors of the Hungarian people may have migrated from eastern Siberia or Inner Asia, and may even be distantly related to the Huns. While mainstream linguistics classifies Hungarian as a Ugric language within the Uralic family, certain typological similarities—such as agglutinative grammar—have been noted between Hungarian and other Eurasian languages, including Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Japonic, and Koreanic languages.

Genetic studies have identified Y‑DNA haplogroups in ethnic Hungarians, such as N3a‑L708 (most common in Siberia), R1a‑Z93 (most common in Kazakhstan), and C2‑M217 (most common in Mongolia). These findings and others have been interpreted by some researchers as supporting a westward migration of ancestors from regions around present-day eastern Siberia and present-day Mongolia approximately 4,500 years ago to the Carpathian Basin.