The sociolinguistic stratification of Hungarian in Subcarpathia

Abstract

The minority Hungarians of Subcarpathia (Ukraine) have been regarded as a linguistically homogeneous community whose Hungarian language use is affected by their contact with Russian and Ukrainian in a uniform manner. This study demonstrates that such a view cannot be upheld in the light of quantitative empirical findings, which show 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.

Hungarian verbal puzzles and the intensity of language contact

“…They are described in Csernicsko  (1998), especially pages 235 . and 256±283; see also Csernicsko  and Fenyvesi (2000). 9.…”

“…A similar implicational relationship was found for (2b), which was chosen as more natural by 91.3 percent of the monolingual Hungarian students in Hungary, by 86.4 percent of the bilingual students in Slovakia who study in a school with Hungarian as the medium of instruction, and by 69.4 percent of the bilingual students who study in a school with Slovak as the medium of instruction. In another study Csernicsko  and Fenyvesi (2000) have analyzed part of the data gathered for the 7-country project`The Sociolinguistics of Hungarian Outside Hungary', which I will also draw on in this paper. 5 One of the features they have studied is the choice between a standard Hungarian synthetic vs. contact-induced analytic construction as in (3) The sentence with the contact-induced phrase utaza Âst busszal`travelling by bus' was selected as the more natural by 37.8 percent of the bi-/multilingual informants in Ukraine vs. 19.6 percent of the monolingual subjects in Hungary.…”

Hungarian Sociolinguistics in the Carpathian Basin, 1985–2022

“…Project members set out to systematically gather data in a replicable fashion, which would allow them to answer questions such as the following: (2005), and Bodó (2005). Also based on the SHOH project are papers by Beregszászi (1995Beregszászi ( /1996, Csernicskó & Fenyvesi (2000), and Kontra (1999Kontra ( , 2001Kontra ( , 2003b. Two of the six volumes are reviewed in English by Fazakas (2014), andBiró &Laihonen (2021).…”

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

“…The present paper is a substantially revised and updated version ofCsernicskó and Fenyvesi (2000). Thanks are due to Anikó Beregszászi, who, together with István Csernicskó, carried out most of the research reported on in this paper.…”