Românii din Ungaria – cercetări și publicații legate de cultura tradițională
Romanians in Hungary – Research and Publications on Traditional Culture

Summary/Abstract: From the point of view of their geographical locations, the Romanian living in Hungary are not a compact group but are rather scattered in several settlements in Békés, Hajdú-Bihar and Csongrád counties, where they live together with Hungarians, Serbs, Slovaks, Germans and Roma. The Romanian traditional communities have lived isolated in certain settlements, and that is why they have managed to preserve their specifically Romanian features and their specific secular dialect for a long time (up to the 60s). Having lived in a Hungarian environment for centuries, their traditions underwent transformations acquiring a special character. The field studies were initially hindered by the lack of specialists. Starting with the 1960’s, the first articles, studies and volumes appeared about the various fields of ethnography and the folklore of the Romanians in the country. In the 1970s, researching the ethnography and folklore of the Romanians living in Hungary officially fell into the duties of the Békés County Museum, and Research Institute of the Romanians in Hungary was established in the 1990s, institutionalizing thus the research. The conservation of traditions had an important role in the life of Romanian communities until recent years because, alongside with their native language, traditional culture was the second significant element defining ethnic identity.

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