Volume 71 (2020): Issue 3 (December 2020)
Číslo venované problematike maďarského jazyka a maďarských nárečí na Slovensku

The aim of this paper is to characterize the linguistic landscape of municipalities in Slovakia inhabited by Hungarian minority. Empirical data come from two sources: from BA and MA theses, which were defended in 2015 – 2020 at the Institute of Hungarian Linguistics and Literary Studies at the Faculty of Central European Studies, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra and from research project VEGA “Minority variety of the Hungarian language in Slovakia”. As part of the above field research, the linguistic landscape of 82 municipalities in which the Hungarian population makes up at least 20% of the population was mapped. The results fundamentally confirm the research findings of P. Laihonen, who studied linguistic landscape in two municipalities. In all municipalities, the most frequent language was Slovak, this applies to all types of analyzed signs with texts (inscriptions of state and municipal authorities, commercial and private signs). Slovak occurs on at least 80% of signs, the representation of Hungarian as the second most frequent language is between 25 – 55%. The most bilingual Slovak-Hungarian signs are in the southwest of Slovakia, where the largest Hungarian minority lives and where Hungarians form the local majority. On bilingual Slovak-Hungarian signs, the preferred language is Slovak, in terms of information content, it is a duplicate publication of information. Municipal authorities and the commercial sphere have the greatest influence on the formation of the linguistic landscape.

The present situation of Hungarian dialects in Slovakia is similar in many respects to that of the dialects of other Hungarian regions (including dialects in Hungary and the cross-border dialects as well), but it also differs from them in other respects. It is well known that there are more differences between Slovakia Hungarian dialects and dialects in Hungary and fewer differences between the former and other minority Hungarian dialects. Intense change in the dialects and the spread of the standard at the expense of the dialects are all-Hungarian phenomena, but the extent of these varies greatly between the situation in Hungary and that of the minorities. The language use of the Hungarian minorities is more dialectal and the spread of the standard is slower among them in Hungary, but their common feature is that changes usually approach the standard. In our study, we discuss the present situation of Hungarian dialects in Slovakia, and attitudinal studies on Slovakia Hungarian dialects and the effect of attitudes on the use of dialectal elements in everyday language use.

Computer supported research of Hungarian dialects in Slovakia began in 2010 at the Institute of Hungarian Linguistics and Literary Science, Faculty of Central European Studies, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. The research is carried out using dialectological software developed by two researchers (Domokos Vékás and Fruzsina Sára Vargha) from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, creating regional dialect databases, first for the Žitný ostrov/Csallóköz region and then for the whole Slovakia Hungarian dialect region. Before a detailed presentation of research results and possibilities in the field of digitized dialectological data, the study briefly describes the methods and Hungarian results of digital dialectology. Based on Hungarian research in Slovakia, it shows how it is possible to generate maps showing the geographical and social distribution of linguistic phenomena and acoustic phonetic analyses of data aligned with sound files. Important results of digital dialectology in Nitra are recently published audiobooks of Hungarian dialects in Slovakia, which can be used in addition to the needs of the researchers as a collection of multimedia dialect texts in school education and in the promotion of dialects.

The paper focuses on the individual language management of Hungarian minority students from Southern Slovakia who migrated to study at university in the capital city of Slovakia, Bratislava. It presents language strategies of five students, based on their language biographies. Each student was interviewed three times during their first three years of study. The language problems of these students include maintaining their mother tongue and improving their skills in Slovak as well as balancing between the two languages in various spheres of life. Factors affecting the language use of the students are family, institutions, peer group and overcoming fear. The students deal with their everyday multilingualism according to several models, which can be described on the axis between Hungarian only to Slovak only, but the students mostly find themselves somewhere in between the two, depending on various spheres (family, university, jobs, peers).

The paper gives an overview of the general and special factors of L2 learning of Hungarian minorities across the borders of Hungary, that is, in Slovakia. Indigenous minorities like Hungarians in Slovakia are strongly interested in fluent state language knowledge. Still, the state school system failed to work out and implement a suitable language pedagogy for linguistic minorities, since the state curriculum comprised only one type of Slovak lessons, the one for pupils speaking Slovak as their mother tongue. This curriculum does not consider the special needs for bilingual pupils (on different levels of bilingualism) and those growing up in pure minority environment. The paper introduces functional cognitive linguistics as a usage-based theory and descriptive activity that gives new methods for L2 learning and teaching, building on the vernacular linguistic and conceptual knowledge of the pupils, focusing on the meaning – form pairs of linguistic expressions both in the vernacular and the second (state) language. In the second part, certain grammatical units are discussed as the topic of functional language pedagogy: lexical units and their grammatical adjustment to the syntactic and semantic structure of the sentence, or metaphor in use. In the third part, the topics of the previous section are treated in a comparative Hungarian – Slovak style, as examples of L2 teaching methodology.

The article deals with the typology of the paradigms of Hungarian verb and describes the phenomenon of the originally medial-reflexive -ik verbs of Hungarian. The article presents the problems caused by the use of the paradigm revived by the Hungarian language renewal in the 19^th century and compares the use of the -ik verbs by bilingual Hungarian students in Slovakia with their contemporaries in Hungary. The result of the study shows that Hungarian high school students in Slovakia are more likely to search for standard variants compared to their Hungarian peers if they feel that using a non-standard solution could lead to a negative value judgment.

This study aims to analyse the informative-type text, questions, and answers of the fourth-grade reading comprehension test according to cognitive processes. A total of 353 respondents participated in the survey. The examined target group was the fourth-grade pupils of Hungarian-language primary schools in bilingual regions in Eastern, Central, and Western Slovakia. The results obtained show that most of the pupils had sufficient background knowledge to interpret the short and simple text, and the new information was well integrated into their existing schema structure. In terms of processes of comprehension, most pupils had no problem with recognizing and retrieving explicitly stated information in the text, neither with making straightforward inferences. However, there were problems in interpreting and integrating information and summarizing them. The results show that half of the pupils had problems with multi-level interpretation of the information obtained and about one-fifth of the pupils gave incorrect answers even to the questions that required the use of the simplest cognitive processes.

The use of official proper names is regulated by laws that contribute to the social codification and standardization of propria registration. The paper deals with minority language laws concerning the use of proper names of national minorities in Slovakia. The author gives an overview of the laws, or more precisely paragraphs dealing with the use of official anthroponyms, toponyms and names of institutions. In Slovakia, the largest national minority is Hungarian, so the paper gives examples of using the proper names of Hungarians living in Slovakia, that is, from Slovak-Hungarian bilingual municipalities. In an ethnically mixed environment, the variability of the forms of propria increases, since in the official (and non-official) sphere, proper names can be used not only in the state language, but also in the minority language. In bilingual municipalities, bilingual toponyms and names of institutions appear in both languages. Members of national minorities have the option of entering a personal name in the Register Offices in their mother tongue. Minority proper names fulfil an ethno-identification function, they are a source of individual and collective identity.