Croatian Hungarian: possibilities and conflicts of dominant and non-dominant variants

Beatrix OSZKÓ

RIL HAS Budapest
(oszkobea@gmail.com)

Keywords: Croatian Hungarian, attitude, conflict between local variant and standard

Croatia, especially the Drávaszög region  (the North-Eastern part of the country) is arguably one of the seven centers of Hungarian where a non-dominant variant of Hungarian is spoken. The number of speakers, however, is about 10.000, and it is permanently decreasing, which results in a somewhat problematic status for this region as far as its official recognition as a center is concerned. One factor influencing  this change is the speakers’ attitude to the dominant variety (DV) as opposed to the non-dominant variety (NDV) of Hungarian used in Croatia.

In this paper we set out to investigate to what extent the variety of the region meets the criteria set up by Clyne and Muhr (Clyne 1992, Muhr 2012, 2016 ) for pluricentric languages and their non-dominant varieties.  In our research we asked several questions as to the attachment of our informants to their homeland, to the Hungarian nation and to the Croatian nation (see Kontra 2016).

We will present data on the attitude of the speakers of this specific NDV of Hungarian (i.e. to their vernacular) along with the Hungary Hungarian standard. For example how beautiful and delicate the speakers find the different varieties of Hungarian, or how useful they think it is to speak Hungarian in the given territories. Thus, the paper focuses on the conflicts of dominant and non-dominant varieties of Hungarian.

Clyne, Michael (ed.) (1992): Pluricentric Languages. Different Norms in Different Countries. Berlin/New York. Mouton/de Gruyter.

Kontra, Miklós (ed.) (2016): A magyar nyelv Horvátországban. A magyar nyelv a Kárpát-medencében a XX. század végén V. Budapest/Eszék. Gondolat Kiadó/Media Hungarica Művelődési és Tájékoztatási Intézet.

Muhr, Rudolf (ed.) (2012): Non-dominant Varieties of pluricentric Languages Getting the Picture. In memory of Michael Clyne. In collaboration with Catrin Norrby, Leo Kretzenbacher, Carla Amorós Negre. Frankfurt a.M./Wien u.a. Peter Lang Verlag.

Muhr, Rudolf (ed.) (2016): Pluricentric Languages and Non-Dominant Varieties Worldwide Part I: Pluricentric Languages across Continents. Features and Usage. In collaboration with Kelen Ernesta Fonyuy, Zeinab Ibrahim and Corey Miller. Wien et al. Peter Lang Verlag.