Slavic words related to kolkhozes’ life in the transcarpathian Hungarian language

Abstract

The operation of collective farms (kolkhozes) has played a significant role in the Hungarian settlements of Transcarpathia over the past century, and this has naturally had an impact on the language use of the people working there. The Slavic neologisms that appeared at that time and were also used by the Hungarians became historicisms with the demise of the system, and entered the initial phase of a well-developed archaization process. The urgency of sociolinguistic studies in this field is underlined by the increasing ageing and continuing death of the potential informants, i.e. kolkhoz workers. Within the framework of this paper, I will try to present some of the borrowed words and their specificities, based on the results of my questionnaire and interview surveys in the Berehovo district, and on the results of my interview survey on the functioning of the kolkhoz-system. Keywords: Hungarian dialects of Transcarpathia, kolkhoz-system, East Slavic loan-words, sociolinguistic studies.