Abstract:

Hungarians constitute to the largest national minority in Slovakia. According to the 2021 census data, more than 420,000 people declared themselves as Hungarians and more than 460,000 as native speakers of Hungarian. A small community is also defined by the use of dialects, which give a sense of belonging to those from the same region. The majority of children with Hungarian as their mother tongue enter school from a dialect environment and there they are first confronted with the fact that the language variety learned at home can only be used to a certain extent. The aim of our research is to assess whether Hungarian secondary school students in Slovakia consider dialect knowledge to be an advantage or a disadvantage, to what extent they admit to knowing the dialect used in their own region and how they perceive the use of dialect. A further aim of our research is to assess in which speech situations Hungarian secondary school students in Slovakia perceive themselves using regional dialects. The survey questionnaire was completed by 793 students of vocational secondary schools and high schools in 13 Hungarian or partly Hungarian educational institutions in Slovakia, in the presence of the researchers. The participating students come from 281 municipalities from Bratislava to Čierna nad Tisou. In the questionnaire survey, the students answered questions in line with the research objectives by selecting the speech situations listed, answering a five-point Likert scale and answering open-ended questions. In our presentation, we will discuss the results of the questionnaire, in which speech situations respondents consider the use of dialect acceptable, their perception of dialectal varieties, their self-reported knowledge of the dialect used in their region and whether they consider dialect knowledge an advantage or a disadvantage. The results of the questionnaire survey also provide insight into the differences in perceptions of Hungarian dialects in Slovakia between different types of educational institutions.

Keywords:

Attitude, dialect, survey, acceptance.