Social Factors Influencing the Acquisition of the Romanian Language by Students Belonging to a Local Community Hungarian Minority

Research on language acquisition is a central theme in sociolinguistic research. Contemporary social, economic and political processes affect the life of communities and the languages what they speak. Globalization, migration and the enlargement of the European Union can significantly change the role and the future of majority and minority languages. In this research, we aim to reveal the family level language choice strategies of the Hungarian community in the small town of Margitha (Bihor County, Romania), discussing the role of family related social framework that positively or negatively influences the motivation of minority students to acquire knowledge of the Romanian language. For this purpose, we used both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches. The results of research confirm that in multi-ethnic communities perhaps the most important, however at the same time the most vulnerable component of ethnic identity is the linguistic identity, which plays a key role in shaping the cultural landmarks and contents that determine the social integration of the individual. The positive family effects of socialization with the Hungarian language can be observed mostly in the ethnically homogeneous family. However, if one of the spouses is ethnic Romanian, the dominant language of communication within the family is more likely to be the Romanian language.

Compound adjectives in the Erzya and Hungarian languages

Introduction. Compounding is one of the leading ways to update vocabulary. A compound word is the result of combining two or more meanings at the lexical-semantic, word-formation, syntactic levels, which determines versatile approaches to its study, including comparative-historical. The purpose of the research is a comparative historical study of compound adjectives of the Erzya and Hungarian languages. It can be achieved by considering the formation patterns of compound adjectives; analysis of compound adjectives in Erzya and Hungarian; identifying the types of relationships between the components of a compound word; statistical calculations. Materials and Methods. The material for analysis was formed by the method of continuous sampling from bilingual dictionaries: Erzya-Russian and Hungarian-Russian. It used the methods for determining the genetic affiliation of language data, establishing a system of correspondences and anomalies in the compared languages; spatial localization of linguistic phenomena. Research and Discussion. Compounding in the Erzya and Hungarian languages are divided into two large groups: 1) formed on the basis of a compositional connection and 2) created on the basis of a subordinate connection between components. As the study showed, complex adjectives of the subordinate type in the Erzya language are few in number, while in the Hungarian language they constitute the majority. This group includes words with the first part – an adjective, a noun, a numeral. Compound adjectives of a compositional type, prevailing in the Erzya language, can be formed as a result of the merger of two proper adjectives, two derived adjectives, repetition of derived adjectives. In the Hungarian language, the share of complex adjectives of the compositional type is small. Among them there are the ones paired and formed by the type of twin words. Conclusion. The results of the study indicate that the formation of complex adjectives in the Hungarian and Erzya languages is an active process.

Towards a new monolingual Hungarian explanatory dictionary

The Lexical Knowledge Representation Research Group at the Department of Lexicology is one of the youngest research groups of the Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics, founded in February 2020. The group is currently working on a new version of a monolingual explanatory dictionary partly based on The Explanatory Dictionary of the Hungarian Language. The aim is to compile an up-to-date online dictionary of contemporary Hungarian (2001–2020) by corpus-driven methods. The present article describes The Explanatory Dictionary of the Hungarian Language and the Comprehensive Dictionary of Hungarian by presenting their history, the circumstances of their compilation, and the basic editorial guidelines. Then it outlines how the corpus for the planned dictionary is to be set up and how this corpus is to be analysed.

Virolinguistics: Introduction to the Study of the Coronavirus Language

This paper undertakes the introduction to virolinguistics, a new linguistic discipline that investigates the virus language (virolect) based on the Hungarian linguistic material drawn from the scientific literature and our own collection. The goal of this work is to evaluate the effect of the pandemic on certain aspects of the Hungarian language: genres, vocabulary, communication, the linguistic landscape, and social media. The linguistic materials of these various areas play an important role in our society: they have a warning, entertaining, or stress-relieving function. Due to the restrictions, most studies have moved to the Internet. The methodological paradox of virolinguistics can be identified in the fact that it disregards certain scientific standards in order to assist linguists in collecting their valuable linguistic and visual materials.

Hungarian Dialectology. Research of Hungarian Dialects in Romania

After the Treaty of Trianon, the long history of research on the Hungarian dialects in the neighbouring countries did not cease. A previous article on the history of research on Hungarian dialect islands reviewed the significant achievements of Hungarian dialect research up to 1920 (Both 2020b). In the present article, we summarize the essential periods and results of Hungarian dialect research in Romania from 1920 to the present day. The article will show how in the last one hundred years a Hungarian-language department in a minority environment has redirected its research, resulting in a decreasing share of dialectological research, and how, despite these developments, the Hungarian dialectological community in Romania has enriched the Hungarian dialectology research with significant results.

Measuring Discrimination against Older People Applying the Fraboni Scale of Ageism

The progressive aging of developed societies, caused by profound demographic changes, brings with it the necessity of confronting the subject of discrimination against older people. In the last 50 years, many scales of ageism have been developed to measure beliefs and attitudes towards older adults. The purpose of our study was to adapt the full Fraboni Scale of Ageism (FSA) to Hungarian language and assess its reliability, validity, and psychometric properties. The sample of the study was representative of the Hungarian population, and the data collection took place online. In our study, we compare the dimensions of the scale with other international studies and present the attitudes and biases of the Hungarian population against the older people. The results of the study indicate that attitudes toward older people are more positive among women, older people, and people living in villages. In this study, we concluded that the Hungarian version of the Fraboni Scale of Ageism is a suitable instrument for both measuring the extent of ageism in the Hungarian population and contributing to further testing the international reliability, validity, and psychometric properties of the Fraboni Scale of Ageism.

Impact of the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic on the Hungarian university students’ social and health behaviour

Background The COVID-19 pandemic brought quick, severe and unexpected changes to our everyday life and also changed the traditional education pattern of Semmelweis University in the middle of academic year 2019–2020. We explored adaptive changes in Hungarian students’ behaviour and their time-budget in order to determine whether quarantine and/or fear of infection were responsible for these changes. Methods A self-administered online questionnaire was distributed to all students in the Hungarian language program (N = 7436) of Semmelweis University. Information was collected on basic demographic data, knowledge and attitude about COVID-19, methods of prevention as well as the students’ behaviour before, during and after the first wave of the pandemic. Statistical analyses were processed using the IBM-SPSS 25.0 software package. Results The overall response rate was 11% (N = 816). Only complete responses were processed (55%, N = 447). Among these responders, 83% did not fear the pandemic. Those who greatly feared COVID-19 infection strictly kept all regulations. The number of non-smokers increased by the end of the first wave. The nutrition of 100 students (21%) became healthier and the lockdown reduced the level of physical activity. Conclusion Social and health-related behaviour of medical students changed basically during the first wave of the pandemic and some changes remained after it in tobacco smoking, nutrition and sleeping habits. Time-budget of students changed significantly during the pandemic and did not return to the baseline values. Results of this study justify future multiple systematic research to analyse and better understand the short- and long-term effects of the current crisis.

Roma népesség és oktatástervezés

Összefoglaló. A tanulmány népszámlálási és kutatási adatok segítségével a roma tanulókkal kapcsolatos oktatási kérdések értelmezésére, az esetleges oktatáspolitikai beavatkozások megalapozására tesz kísérletet. A szerző azt állítja, a romának gondolt tanulók jelenléte önmagában nem kellene semmilyen nyelvi-etnikai kihívást jelentsen, hiszen az esetek zömében – a népszámlálási adatok tanúsága szerint – szintén magyar anyanyelvű népességről van szó. Az igazi kihívást a roma populáció társadalmi szerkezetben elfoglalt helye jelenti: mivel az alsóbb társadalmi rétegekbe, gyakran társadalmon kívüli élethelyzetekbe szorulva élnek, ez visszahat az iskolai eredményességükre, illetve társadalmi integrációjukra is. Summary. Based on census and research data the study tries to analyse the educational situation of Roma students, and it intends to describe some educational policy interventions. According to the author the school presence of the Roma students is not an ethnic or linguistique question as Hungarian language is their mother tongue. The real challenge is the social situation of the Roma population: as they live in lower social strata, often in underclass situation, this has an impact on their school performance, and finally on their social integration.