Resiliencing Hungarian Minority Languages in the new Europe

Abstract

Hungarian minority languages are spoken in seven countries in Central and Eastern Europe, including Slovakia, Ukraine (Sub-Carpathian region), Romania (Transylvania), Serbia (Vojvodina), Croatia (Slavonia), Slovenia (Mura region) and Austria (Burgenland). In most of these countries and regions the Hungarian language counts a substantial number of speakers and all these countries and regions are neighbouring the kin-state Hungary. In the kin-state, the Hungarian language is the official language of the state. Due to twentieth century’s totalitarian and nationalist ideologies the Hungarian minority languages were discriminated. After the collapse of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe at the beginning of the nineties of the past century the Hungarian minority languages have gained official status in the countries and/or regions they are spoken in. The concrete rights the Hungarian minority languages are granted however vary enormously, from ousting Hungarian from the official domains as in Slovakia to granting the Hungarian language a status as one of the official languages, such as in the Autonomous Province (AP) of Vojvodina. Despite these differences, we observe the resiliencing of the Hungarian minority languages in the so-called Carpathian Macroregion. In the heart of Europe, the Hungarian language functions in fact as a transnational regional vernacular language that has the potential of becoming a regional vehicular language. The resiliencing of the Hungarian minority languages in the Carpathian Macroregion also boosts multilingual and transnational communication. In this paper, it will be argued that this process is strongly supported by the Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe. The paper concludes with a general outlook on the position of minority languages in the post-Lisbon European Union.