Anna Biro
ELTE Budapest, Hungary

An insight into the Serbian Hungarian language

Hungarian language spoken in Vojvodina (Serbia) can be considered as regional language, and according to Muhr’s criteria (2012) for pluricentric languages, Hungarian language belongs to the third level of pluricentricity: its varieties lack the appropriate formal status (they have the status of a minority language).
In many cases the independence of a regional language as a local variety is not a linguistic but a political question (see the example of the forced separation of Serbian and Croatian languages, or the separation of the Bosnian and Montenegrin from the previous two).

As for the Hungarian language and the independence of its varieties, there is a balance between the Hungarian national identity and the linguistic separation development tendency; it would not be beneficial for none part of the nation of they tried to enforce or validate a variety as an independent language (Molnár Csikós 2012).

There is a two-way process going on: dialects are being moved to the background by their speakers, and at the same time regional vernaculars are being developed, which are somewhere in between dialects and the official standard variety.

There are three main phenomena affecting the development and the characteristics of the Serbian Hungarian language:

•   Local or regional dialects
•   State language (contact phenomena)
•   Insistence or affection for the national standard variety
The number of its speakers is gradually decreasing: in 1991 there were 343.800 Hungarians living in Serbia, in 2002 293.299, while in 2011 there were only 253.899 (Census 2011). This number has been still decreasing.
Serbian Hungarian is not homogeneous in its spoken form: there are differences according to the type of settlement (town or village, scattered area or array), communication situation, linguistic domains, age and level of education of the speaker. Most differences can be seen in phonological and morphological characteristics (e.g. centre-closed [ë] sound, labialization, illabialization, vowel elongation, palatalization etc. (Kovács Rácz 2013)).

As for the written form, the standard variety is taught at schools, although when analysing the essays of primary school pupils it is often difficult to categorize the errors or alterations (whether they are spelling mistakes, lack of grammar knowledge or the effect of the dialect).
When considering minority languages, language planning is difficult by itself, but the demographic diversity and fragmentation of the Hungarian population in Serbia makes it even more problematic. Education in mother tongue is ensured in the northern part of Vojvodina up to secondary school level and there are some university majors too, but in the scattered settlements there are difficulties to ensure even primary school classes every year (Vukov Raffai 2013). The question of the use of the standard and the non-dominant variety in schools is still not solved and this causes problems mainly in the scattered area, where the input of the state language and the local dialect is high, but at the same time the input of the standard variety is often too low. As a result pupils find themselves in dilemma even in case of the written language as the rules of the linguistic socialization are not clarified in the education system.

Bibliography:

Census 2011: 2011 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, 2012.
Kovács Rácz, Eleonóra (2013): Nyelvjárási attitudök. [= Dialect attitudes]. Újvidék. Bölcsészettudományi Kar – Újvidék, Magyar nyelv és irodalom tanszék.
Molnár Csikós, László (2012): Nyelvhasználatunk és a magyar köznyelv [= Our Use of Hungarian Language and Standard Hungarian]. In: Hungarológiai Közlemények XLIII-1/XIII.1, Újvidék, 1-10.
Muhr, Rudolf (2012): Linguistic dominance and non-dominance in pluricentric languages: A typology. In: Non-dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages. Getting the Picture. In memory of Michael Clyne. ed. Rudolf  Muhr, Wien. Peter Lang Verlag 2012, 23-48.
Vukov Raffai, Éva (2013): Papp György és a vajdasági magyar nyelvi tervezés [= György Papp and Hungarian Language Planning in Vojvodina]. In: Hungarológiai Közlemények XLIV-4/XIV-4, Újvidék, 11-18.