The Ukrainian (Transcarpathian) Hungarian as a “non-dominant” variety of Hungarian as a pluricentric language

István CSERNICSKÓ

Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian Institute (Beregovo, Ukraine) and University of Pannonia (Veszprém, Hungary)

(csernicsko.istvan@kmf.uz.ua)

Réka MÁTÉ

Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian Institute (Beregovo, Ukraine) and University of Pannonia (Veszprém, Hungary)

(suto.reka93@gmail.com)

Keywords: Hungarian Language, Ukrainian (Transcarpathian) Hungarian variety of Hungarian, codification, regional standards, pluricentric Hungarian.

On the website of pluricentric languages (http://www.pluricentriclanguages.org/),  Hungarian is also mentioned amongst pluricentric languages; but the editors of the website list only four non-dominant varieties (secondary centers) of this language (http://www.pluricentriclanguages.org//plc-languages/hungarian): Hungarian Hungarian, Slovakian Hungarian, Romanian Hungarian, and Serbian Hungarian. The Ukrainian (Transcarpathian) variety of the Hungarian language is not mentioned in the list. However, the Ukrainian (Transcarpathian) variety of the Hungarian language is one of the “non-dominant” varieties of pluricentric Hungarian language. In our presentation, we will prove this, presenting the main features of the Ukrainian (Transcarpathian) Hungarian variety of the Hungarian language: the demographic characteristics of the carriers of this language variety; the most important linguistic differences between (Standard) Hungarian and Ukrainian (Transcarpathian) Hungarian; past and present, as well as theoretical and practical problems of regional codification of the “non-dominant” Ukrainian (Transcarpathian) variety of the Hungarian language; and finally, we describe the communicative functions of this linguistic variety.