The typical features of Hungarian language used in the documents of local councils in Slovakia

Károly PRESINSZKY

Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra

(kpresinszky@ukf.sk)

Keywords: Hungarian official language usage in Slovakia, records of local council's meetings, reports, state language, regional language usage

In my study I deal with the linguistic features of documents written in Hungarian at the meetings of local councils in Slovakia. Languages, which are used in many countries in various important functions like in administration, mass media or education, are regarded as pluricentric languages. One of the Hungarian language's partial centres can be found in some parts of Slovakia where the Hungarian language is usable in administration based on the law which regulates the language usage of the minorities. We know several surveys which deal with the language usage of South-Slovakian villages and towns in administration but these focus mainly on the choice of using Hungarian or Slovak language. In Slovakia the Termini researching network deals with the terminology used in the Slovak-Hungarian administration. In my presentation I'm not focusing on the terminology of forms but I put emphasize on the analysis of reports and records written at the meetings of local councils in Slovakia. I examine the effect of Slovak language and dialects of Hungarian on Hungarian texts written in standard. The analyzed texts were collected by the author during 12 years working as a representative of a local council.