The effects of language contact in a Hungarian minority novel: on the example of
Éva Berniczky’s Méhe nélkül a Bába

Gabriella Mádi

(Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian College/
University of Pannonia, Beregszász, Ukraine

(madi.gabriella86@gmail.com)

Key words: Transcarpathia, multilingualism, code-switching, loanwords

Hungarian is a pluricentric language since its users are scattered in several countries in the Carpathian basin. Those who live in Hungary are the speakers of its standard variety while those living in the neighbouring countries speak different non-dominant varieties. These varieties all bear the marks of the state language in the first place, then other languages that co-exist in a given territory at the same time. All of them originate from the same Hungarian but the fact that the users are surrounded by another, or in fact, several other languages affect the variety of Hungarian they use. Hungarians in minority also produce literature, write books, publish newspapers using their own variety of the language and it is interesting to observe the way they do that, especially in the case of literature.

Since literature tends to reproduce the reality, we can assume that novels by authors of Hungarian minority must reflect the language use of the given minority group. However, the readers of such literature might or surely will not belong exclusively to the given minority. Presuming that monolingual Hungarians or those who do not speak the language that affected the specific minority variety still want to enjoy these novels, the authors aim to write them in a balanced way where the specific elements that make the variety unique can still be traceable, but not so much as to interfere with the reader’s understanding, thus remain enjoyable for all readers.

Éva Berniczky’s Méhe nélkül a bába [The midwife without her womb] is a Transcarpathian Hungarian novel bearing several indicators that it was created in a multilingual environment. Slavic characters, several examples of code-switching and loanwords appear in the book indicating the culturally and linguistically colorful environment the book was written in.