The situation of the Hungarian language in case of the

language island in the Nitra region

Anna SÁNDOR

(dnagyova@ukf.sk)

The twenty-six villages of the Nitra region, which are located in the western part of the Carpathian Basin, can be considered as the most northern continuous group of the Hungarian language speaking community. It started to isolate in the 18^th and became a language island in the 20^th century. The variety of the Hungarian language that is spoken by the approximately ten thousand members of the given community, can be characterised by archaisms and language contact phenomena of Slovak origin. The mentioned language variety, though, has a symbolic significance, since it is the vernacular language variety of the given community. In addition, it is also a medium of the rich folk heritage of the given language island, as well as part of the community’s identity. However, the language variety in question is threatened from several points of view. The reason, on the one hand, is that the language island is located far from the norm-creating centre of the Hungarian language and its non-dominant variety is often considered as stigmatized by its speakers. On the other hand, it is also threatened, since the process of assimilation of the inhabitants who live in the given region and speak Hungarian language is considerably intensive; in some of the villages it has even entered the final phase of assimilation. The contribution is trying to give the answer to the question which factors helped or help and which threaten the preservation of this specific Hungarian language variety.