La place de l'emprunt dans l'argot de Budapest

Abstract

RéSUMé Hungarian slang seems to be much older than the wordlists dating from the last quarter of the 18th century traditionally considered the oldest documents of Hungarian cant. Some 14th century proper names could also be regarded as examples of underworld slang. While the 18th century lists contain but very few loanwords, one of the main charateristics of the urban slang that develops in Pest and Buda (later Budapest) in the 19th century is the particularly large number of borrowings from languages such as German, Yiddish and Romany. Although this mostly foreign slang was magyarized during the last decades of the 19th century, present-day Budapest slang still contains 25-30 % loanwords (many of them borrowed from English and American slang) most of which, however, can be regarded as borrowings only from a diachronic point of view.