Ildikó Vanco
Constantine the Philospoher University in Nitra, Slovakia

The Hungarian language in Slovakia

For Hungarians in Slovakia, the Hungarian language plays the determining role in their national identity. Certain phenomena of the Slovak Hungarian language variety differ from Standard Hungarian since the different social, political situation led to differences in the language use, too (Lanstyák–Szabómihály 2005). The main reason of these differences emerges from the bilingual environment in which the Hungarians in Slovakia live (Kontra 2006). As a result of this, language contact phenomena can be observed at all linguistic levels. These contact phenomena come up as loanwords, borrowings or interference, and they do not exist in any of the monolingual Hungarian varieties.

Elements of the colloquial language and those of dialects appear to a greater extent in the standard Slovak Hungarian variety than in Standard Hungarian (Lanstyák 2011). Since the Slovak variety of Hungarian is not present at all scenes of language use, certain registers and especially language varieties for specific purposes are missing. As compared to Standard Hungarian, the variety used in Slovakia may seem to be more archaic to a certain extent, as linguistic neologisms created in the home country get more slowly into the Slovak variety, if they get there at all.  

References

Kontra Miklós 2006. Hungarian In- and Outside Hungary. In: Ulrich Ammon–Norbert Dittmar–Klaus J. Mattheier–Peter Trudgill (eds.), Sociolinguistics, An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. 2nd edition. Vol. 3. Walter de Gruyter: Berlin. 1811–1818.

Lanstyák, István – Szabómihály Gizella 2005. Hungarian in Slovakia. In: Hungarian Language Contact outside Hungary – Studies on Hungarian as a Minority Language.  red. Fenyvesi, Anna. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Lanstyák, István 2011.Nyelvi problémák a szlovákiai magyar beszéloközösségben. Fórum Társadalomtudományi Szemle 13/2, 3–24.

The Situation. 2002. The Situation of Hungarians in Slovakia. www.htmh.hu/reports2002/slovakia2002.htm