Zoltan KARMACSI
Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian
Hungarian Institute
(kozi1526@gmail.com)
After 4 July 1920, in conformity with the Treaty of Trianon, much of Hungary’s territory, as well as the Hungarian mother tongue population was forced to become part of other state formations. In about one century after it, by virtue of the majority state language influence non-dominant varieties of pluricentric Hungarian language were formed on the territories outside Hungary.
In 1996 a collective sociolinguistic research was conducted in the over the border regions (control group includes Hungary as well) and as a result four books from The Hungarian Language in the Carpathian Basin at the End of XX Century collection were published: Csernicskó István The Hungarian Language in Ukraine (Transcarpathia) (1998), Göncz Lajos The Hungarian Language in Yugoslavia (Voivodina) (1999), Lanstyák István The Hungarian Language in Slovakia (2000), Szépfalusi István – Vörös Ottó – Beregszászi Anikó – Kontra Miklós The Hungarian Language in Austria and Slovenia (2012). These volumes and the research itself broke new ground for they gave insight into those transborder linguistic changes and language use customs that were considered taboo until then. Due to these researches and active participation of numerous researchers, the Termini Hungarian Language Research Network was established that had and still has great success in the elimination of borders for the Hungarian language, as well as in the scientific study of the differences in the Hungarian language both in Hungary and the neighbouring countries. The research network has been compiling the Termini Hungarian-Hungarian dictionary[1] that contains words used by the Hungarians in seven transborder regions (Transylvania, Transcarpathia, South Slovakian (Upper Hungary), Voivodina, Prekmurje, Croatia, and Burgenland).
My lecture is not aimed at expanding the Termini online dictionary database. I would like to gain insight into the level of knowledge of borrowings of the Slovak Hungarian language varieties in the following cities along the Slovak-Hungarian state border: Komárom (HU) and Komárno (SK), Esztergom (HU) and Štúrovo (SK); furthermore: whether the Hungarian standard meaning of the Hungarians living in Slovakia is known and used by the Slovak research areas. Thus, our aim is to study how much the universally known Slovak borrowings and their meanings are recognized in Hungary, and to investigate whether the Hungarian minority in Slovakia recognizes the loan words' standard Hungarian equivalents. In other words, the research offers insight into the problem of whether linguistic separate development turned to adjustment, and the degree of influence of the border language varieties at least on the lexical level.
186 informants participated in the questionnaire survey: in Komárno 25, Štúrovo 25, at the Faculty of Central European Studies of Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra 38, in Komárom 25, Esztergom 25, at Pázmány Péter Catholic University 48. In other words, 88 Slovak (Upper Hungary) and 98 Hungarian informants participated in the survey.