Államnyelvi hatás a kárpátaljai magyar anyanyelvű egészségügyi dolgozók nyelvhasználatában

Abstract

In Ukraine, doctors and nurses are trained in the official language, and it is also common to find health professionals who come from somewhere in Ukraine and do not understand Hungarian at all. It is therefore not uncommon for "patients with Hungarian mother tongues to find it difficult to communicate with Ukrainian and Russian-speaking doctors and nurses". Of course, there are also native Hungarian-speaking health workers who, despite the exclusivity of state language education, are able to communicate in Hungarian and, if necessary, can even act as mediators in doctor-patient conversations. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that in their case, because of the exclusivity of state language education, second language influences are more pronounced, and they either do not know Hungarian terminology or, if they do, they hardly use it, since it is easier for them to understand each other in mixed-language working communities. In this paper, based on the data of a recent questionnaire survey, we try to present the level of language proficiency and the frequency of communication in certain languages of the native Hungarian-speaking health care workers in Transcarpathia, as well as the language use characteristics of the Hungarian language, paying special attention to the use of technical language-related loanwords or loanwords that are commonly known but can be included in the health care register. Based on the results of the research, the multilingual nature of Transcarpathian Hungarian mother tongue health care workers can be considered as clear evidence, which in the vast majority of cases implies a Hungarian mother tongue dominance. The level of proficiency in the official language of the respondents is closely related to the language in which they have completed their vocational training and the language composition of the work community in which they work. The latter also largely determines the frequency with which individuals use their mother tongue, the official language and Russian, as well as various foreign languages.