Nicole Poulson, age 15, of Nashua, N.H., for her question:

WHO ARE THE MAGYARS

Magyars make up more than 95 percent of the population of Hungary. Many of them are descended from the early Magyars, a people who settled in Hungary in the late 800s.

The term Magyar also refers to people who do not have Magyar ancestry. but who have adopted Magyar culture, especially the language. Magyar belongs to the Uralic and Altaic language family, a group that includes Finnish, Mongol and Turkish.

The early Magyars probably came from a region in Russia between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains. After arriving in Hungary, they raided many areas of Europe until the mid 900x.

By 1914, Hungary's Magyar population had grown to about 10 million. Hungary was among the Central Powers defeated in World War I. It lost about two thirds of its territory to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Romania under the Treaty of Trianon. About a third of the Magyars then lived in the area won by these countries.