Borders Of Hungary Research Articles

Survey of the presence ofScaphoideus titanusBall in Hungary

A survey for the presence of Scaphoideus titanus — the vector of the quarantine grapevine yellow phytoplasma ( Flavescence dorée FD) — was carried out in the year 2007–2008 in all Hungarian vineyards. The conclusion is that S. titanus has spread from the southern border of Hungary to the eastern wine growing regions.

ANNA FENYVESI (ed.), Hungarian language contact outside Hungary: Studies on Hungarian as a minority language

Anna Fenyvesi (ed.), Hungarian language contact outside Hungary: Studies on Hungarian as a minority language . Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. xx, 424. Hb $162.00. Hungarians living outside Hungary left the country in various ways: Some were voluntary migrants who began to seek economic opportunity or political asylum, while others became involuntary immigrants to neighboring countries when the Treaty of Trianon shrank the borders of Hungary by two-thirds in 1920. Because these involuntary minorities were difficult for researchers to discuss under the communist regimes that ruled until 1989 (p. 4), this edited volume introduces a recent body of research that previously has been published mostly in Hungarian.

Névváltozási jelenségek Zoboralja helyneveiben (Menyhe és Zsére névanyaga alapján)

Place names, including microtoponyms – similarly to other linguistic signs – can perform different changes as a result of external (non linguistic) or internal (linguistic) reasons. These changes might affect the form as well as the meaning of place names; furthermore, in Hungarian inhabited regions beyond the present borders of Hungary, place names frequently disappear because of the intense assimilation. This paper compares the historical place names from the second half of the 19th century to those used today in two neighbouring settlements of Zoboralja, which belong to two significantly different regions. The place names have changed in different ways as a result of the different situation and divergent development of the villages. In the isolated Menyhe, 32% of place names have remained unchanged. In Zsére, 34% of historical place names have disappeared or have been substituted by different names. Because of its situation, the latter settlement is more exposed to changes initiated by external factors; as a result, old name forms are less frequently preserved. Place names in both settlements are affected by internal, intralinguistic changes: the plural marker -k establishes many place names; morphologic reduction in the place names of Zsére indicates linguistic efficiency; changes of the syntactic structure can only be observed in Zsére.

The moral of the Hungarian Status Law saga

The present paper deals with the debate about the fiercely disputed Hungarian Status Law and its amendments. The Law was destined to grant a special status to ethnic Hungarians living the beyond the borders of Hungary. The paper contains a brief comparison of the mainly Central and Eastern European laws, through which states grant special rights to their kinminorities. The international debate about the Hungarian Status Law is also covered by the paper. Even though several states grant special status to the members of their kin-minorities the enactment of the Hungarian Status Law triggered a surprisingly fierce debate. It is submitted that although in some details the law might have run counter certain public international law principles, the reaction to the law was mainly backed by emotional arguments and hence the whole controversy could not go beyond the level of symbols. The paper also deals with the 2003 amendment of the Law, which was enacted according to the objections raised by the neighbouring co...

A határ menti területek jellegzetességeinek átalakulása a 20. század végi Nyugat-Magyarországon

Magyarország nyugati határa, az osztrák–magyar államhatár az első világháborút lezáró békerendszerben született meg, hasonlóan Magyarország többi államhatárához. Azonban történeti fejlődésében, jellegzetességeiben lényeges eltéréseket találunk. A két világháború közötti időszakban, mikor a környező, újonnan alakult vagy frissen átalakult nemzetállamok (a kis-antant országok) az új határok elválasztó szerepének fokozására törekedtek nyugati határunk átjárható maradt, Magyarország és Ausztria között a határ nem jelentett akadályt a mindennapi kapcsolatok folytatásában. A szocializmus időszaka alatt azonban ez a határvonal két nagy világrendszer elválasztó gátjává vált, s a szigorúan őrzött határterületek kimaradtak fontos fejlesztési programokból, s a korábban hagyományosan fejlett térségek periférikus helyzetbe kerültek. Az 1989-1990. évi rendszerváltás után a térség helyzete ismételten felértékelődött, s mára az osztrák-magyar határmente jelentős része az ország gazdasági fejlődésének élenjáró területévé vált. Tanulmányunk ennek az utolsó évtizednek a változásait kívánja bemutatni korábbi kutatások eredményeit felhasználva. Szólunk az átalakuló gazdaságról, összehasonlítva azt a szomszédos osztrák területek (Burgenland) fejlődési irányaival; a társadalmi átalakulásról; a határon átnyúló kapcsolatok megváltozásáról és a jövőbéli lehetőségekről.

The Language Situation in Hungary

This monograph reports on the language situation in Hungary, a largely monolingual country, where nearly 98% of the population speak Hungarian as their first language. Therefore, the primary focus of the study is on the Hungarian language as used by some 10 million people within the national borders of Hungary, and less attention is paid to either Hungarian as a minority language spoken mostly in the neighbouring countries, or the language of ethnic minorities living in Hungary. At the same time, conscious of the fact that the Hungarian language is of limited use outside Hungary, Hungarians have always attached great importance to foreign language learning. The secondary focus of this monograph, therefore, is placed on issues concerning foreign language instruction. While the language situation of Hungary is examined from a historical perspective, the main emphasis is placed on the presentation of recent developments, especially those occurring since the fall of communism in 1989.

A mezőgazdaság jövője, avagy a fenntartható fejlődés esélyei az Alföldön

It is becoming more and more evident by now that the real losers of the process of relative economic and social deconcentration, starting after the systemic change, are the rural areas in the Great Plain. The decline of the villages outside urban agglomerations and dynamic spatial structural axes is almost unavoidable, as the future of the villages that only rely upon agriculture is very uncertain. Village houses in Hungary have small courts, which does not meet the demand of modern agriculture. It is expected thus that the dynamic centres of the Hungarian agriculture will be the farms and manors newly built on medium size and large estates, or the farms "inherited" from the agricultural co-operatives. Of course regions where self-sustaining small homesteads are dominant will exist for a long time, but their inhabitants will probably have a very low living standard.The most hopeless in the Great Plain is the situation of the large rural regions along the borders. Here we can find counties the larger part of which – together with their county centres – were given to Rorhania and Ukraine after World War I and only the smaller part of them remained in Hungary. The rural regions situated here had taken an active part in the geographical division of labour of the historical Hungary, although with varying weight, and their economic life (agricultural production) was mainly connected to the large market centres of the market line on the brink of the Great Plain (Arad, Nagyvárad, Szatmárnémeti, Munkács, Ungvár). The borders drawn by the Treaty of Trianon tore these integrated regional units of the economic life apart, leaving these rural areas without urban centres and consumer markets. The practice of regional development in the past few decades promoted the centralisation of capital and labour force. This investment policy hardly paid any attention to the development, of areas with marginal location, because it focused on the development of a few towns and spent most of its resources on them. The available resources only enabled the rapid development of selected centres (mainly county seats), at the same time, for conceptual reasons and because of the features of the capital-distributing mechanism, the development of the centres of slighter significance was strongly restricted, and the "basic" settlements were practically damned for a decline. The changing economic policy accelerated concentration in the Great Plain, too, and the centralised development resulted in an increase in the differences within the counties. Because of this, large rural regions along the borders got into a crisis situation (e.g. Middle Tisza Region, the Sárrét area, Tiszazug, Bodrogköz, Taktaköz). The fundamental structural and organisational transition, concomitant with the systemic change in economy, did not improve the situation, either. It is no wonder thus that large agricultural regions in the Great Plain, primarilj , the rural regions situated along the borders of Hungary or the county borders, will find extreme difficulties in getting out of the long-lasting process of impoverishment and they will only be able to do so with significant help from the outside.

The Anatomy of a Colonization Frontier: The Banat of Temešvar

If, as Meinig has suggested, the essential significance of colonization is that it produces a radical change and a totally new geography, there can be few regions in Europe which illustrate the process more vividly than the middle Danube plains, lying astride the modern borders of Hungary, Yugoslavia and Romania. Over four centuries the varied strategic and economic potentials of these countries have been viewed by successive individuals and state administrations from different standpoints with the result that each, whether peasant or feudal magnate, imperial official or socialist planner, has left his interpretation as one of a series of veneers or imprints on earlier cultural strata. Historically, the primary guiding consideration in formation of policy was strategic, as has generally been the case; yet beneath this politico-administrative structural level were numerous economic and social frameworks of action which in many ways achieved more enduring tangible expression in community and landscape alike. Within the concept of these two organizational levels, this paper will trace the emergence of the region from sparsely settled wilderness to dynamic multi-national agrarian complex in the period from the early sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century.