Sociolinguistic and Contact-induced Variation in Hungarian Language Use in Subcarpathia, Ukraine

István Csernicskó,Anna Fenyvesi

doi:10.5195/ahea.2012.91

Abstract

In addition to showing regional and social variation, the language use of the minority Hungarians of Subcarpathia, Ukraine, also presents a reflection of the region’s complex linguistic history and its effects from contact with Russian and Ukrainian. On the basis of quantitative empirical findings, this study shows Subcarpathian Hungarians to be a sociolinguistically stratified group of speakers whose Hungarian language use varies in a systematic manner according to sex, age, level of education, and place of residence. The paper also outlines some of the main differences in the language use of Hungarians in Subcarpathia and Hungary which are manifested in statistically significant ways.

Highlights

Following World War I, millions of ethnic Hungarians found themselves outside the political border of Hungary became citizens of other countries, namely Yugoslavia, Romania, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Austria
We identify patterns in their language use and thereby demonstrate that social stratification exists in the Hungarian language use within this region
Able to find 1989 census data on what the proportion of Hungarians is in individual places: in nine of the ten Subcarpathian towns ethnic Hungarians constituted a minority, and only in one, Berehove/Beregszász a majority; in eight towns – in Užgorod/Ungvár among them – the proportion of Hungarian residents was under 30%

Summary

Introduction

Following World War I, millions of ethnic Hungarians found themselves outside the political border of Hungary became citizens of other countries, namely Yugoslavia, Romania, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. We should note that if we arrange by type of task the four items for synthetic vs analytical constructions plus the item involving the underived vs derived compound discussed in the previous subsection, as, we find that questions where subjects were asked to do sentence correction, i.e. a task requiring relatively greater effort, in both Subcarpathia and Hungary more nonstandard variants were supplied than in the cases when subjects had to choose between two given alternatives in the sentence selection task and the lexical fill in the blanks. AHEA: E-journal of the American Hungarian Educators Association, Volume 5 (2012): http://ahea.net/e-journal/volume-5-2012 other Indo-European languages like English) employ plural agreement (cf the old friends were elected representatives) This phenomenon was included in two sentences, (with a subject complement) and (with an object complement): in subjects had to select one of the two sentences, standard (a) or nonstandard (b), whichever they considered better, while in they had to fill in one of the two supplied phrases in the sentence, standard komolynak (komoly-nak, serious-DAT) or nonstandard komolyaknak (komoly-ak-nak, serious-PL-DAT). The majority vs. minority status of Hungarians in a place showed statistical significance in the case of several variables again, and, not surprisingly, in all cases residence in a place with a Hungarian population in the majority correlated with standard answers

Discussion

Findings

Conclusions

53. Jyväskylä