The languages of the national minorities of Transcarpathia in the Ukrainian media discourse during the war

Abstract

The article analyzes the peculiarities of discussing the issue of languages of national mi­norities of Transcarpathia in Ukrainian online media between April 25, 2019 (after the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Law “On Ensuring the Functioning of Ukrai­nian as the State Language” in the second reading) and December 2022. It has been traced that in Ukraine, the level of interest in Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, and Polish languages during this period (according to Google Trends) was heterogeneous and in­creased significantly after the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Publications on the languages of national minorities in Transcarpathia mainly concern the Hungarian community (75 %), with only a tiny part covering the Romanian (3 %), Slovak and Roma (2 % each), and German (1 %). 17 % of publications cover the issues of several national communities simultaneously. “Karpatskyi Objektyv” and “Zakarpat- tya online” are the media that most often cover this issue. The analysis led to the con­clusion that before Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine, online media covered the pros­pects for the functioning of the Hungarian language in educational institutions in Transcarpathia most of all. However, after the beginning of Russia’s post-wide invasion, this issue was relegated to the background, and more attention was paid to the function­ing of the Russian language in Ukraine, the discussion of the law on national minorities, and the creation of new opportunities for learning Ukrainian, including for representa­tives of national minorities. Taking into account the observed content trends in media publications, it is suggested that the language issue has been a pretext for Hungary to obstruct Ukraine’s integration with NATO rather than a reason. Keywords: language of national minorities, Transcarpathia, media, Hungarian language, Ro­manian language, Slovak language, Ukrainian language.