Limbile minoritare din Ungaria in mediul profesional/Minderheitensprachen im Berufsumfeld in Ungarn
The choice of minority languages in the professional domain in Hungary

Summary/Abstract: The choice of minority languages in the professional domain in Hungary The aims of the sociolinguistic survey “Dimensions of linguistic otherness: Prospects of minority language maintenance in Hungary” were to develop powerful multidisciplinary comparative research methodology and tools, which have predictive power with respect to future linguistic assimilation processes, and to give a detailed analysis of the dynamics and local models of language shift and maintenance focusing on the process of language shift. (This research has been supported by the National Research & Development Programme 5/126/2001.) The study based on this sociolinguistic survey examined – in six minority communities: Boyash, German, Roma, Romanian, Serb, and Slovak – the choice of minority languages and the Hungarian at the workplaces, among 421 subjects and another member (or members) of the own minority community. From the questionnaire we analyzed the answers concerning the question: K47 What language do you use with German/Romanian/Serb/etc. colleagues at your workplace? The subjects had the following options to answer the question: (1) Always German/Romanian/Serb/ etc. (2) Mostly German/Romanian/Serb/etc. (3) Both German/Romanian/Serb/etc. and Hungarian (4) Mostly Hungarian (5) Always Hungarian. Results demonstrate that minority languages at workplaces are used most frequently by Serbs then by Romanians and Slovaks, and in Boyash and Roma communities were said to be used minority languages at the least. It is important to mention that in the Boyash and Roma communities the rates of unemployment are the biggest. In the German minority community the patterns of language choice at workplaces are different than are in the other five communities. Germans were said to be used Hungarian at the workplaces situated in the German minority community, more than at the workplaces situated outside the German minority community. In the Hungarian society Germans answered they use most frequently the German language. It is due to the factor that in Hungarian society from the six studied minority languages German is the most prestigious language. The less prestigious languages are the Boyash, and Romani, and also these languages are said to be used very rare. The maintenance of minority languages in Hungary needs to resolve many of unsolved problems at different levels, for example: parliamentary representation of minorities; to cease the ethnobusiness process in the activity of minority self-governments; to establish successful minority institutional systems (e.g. schools for Boyash and Roma children in their mother tongue from primary schools); to stop the spread of low prestige of minority languages and dialects in society and also in minority communities; to initiate strategies for additive bilingualism, and for minority revitalization, for reversing language shift; and to create satisfactory support for doing minority research.

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