Reed Richardson Jr., age 14, of Dodge City, Ran., for his question:

WHAT ARE 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 tgerm "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, historians tell us, 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 9008.

The Magyars population had grown to about 10 million by 1914. Hungary was then 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.