Dear App Ling writers, 

I'm posting this essay as an example for you. It's not perfect - there's no thesis statement in the intro paragraph, for example, to tell the reader exactly what the essay will be about - but it is well-written and easy to read and it cites its sources correctly. When you post your essay, it should look like this! :)

Hungarian dialects

            Hungarian, like many other languages, has its regional varieties. These are called dialects. The distinction between language and dialect is vague and is best described by the common aphorism: “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy”. This means that speakers of a dialect do not have their own sovereign state. Furthermore, dialects do not have a standard form and are rarely used in writing. Standard and non-standard dialects can also be distinguished on the basis that the former is supported by institutions, recognized by the government or simply considered correct. Based on this information it can be said that Hungarian is a language with different regional varieties.

            Hungarian is a Uralic language spoken mainly in Hungary and by Hungarian minorities in other countries, especially the seven neighboring states. Unlike speakers of, for instance, certain Chinese dialects, speakers of Hungarian are able to understand each other with slight or no difficulties. The main difference between these dialects is the use of certain vowels. It is common that speakers of a variety replace a phoneme with another or there are people who perceive the difference between two vowels while others do not. Vocabulary may also be a difference between dialects. Certain people tend to use words that are mainly unknown for others who come from a different area. There is even less difference in grammatical structures between dialects. One example is the use of different diminutives but despite these differences people can easily understand each other.

            Prior to the “creation” of the standard Hungarian language only regional dialects existed. Up to that point everyone spoke a certain regional variety and no common Hungarian language existed. Now basically three levels of the language exist: the standard dialect, the regional dialects and something called the regional standard. The latter one is somewhere between the former two. It is a standard for people speaking a certain variety containing elements from the language of the region (Kiss,  2002,  p. 81). As people’s attitude towards dialects tends to change as well as the language they speak, which is influenced by society and other factors, it is interesting to see who speaks regional varieties and who uses the standard. These factor are, as listed by Kiss (2001), age, education and the situation in which the language use takes place, among others.

            Age always seems to be an important factor when language is concerned. As younger generations always use newer and newer terms as their slang, people within different age groups tend to have different relations with dialects. The generally accepted idea has been that while older people speak the varieties of the region they originate from, younger people use it less often. Imre (1972) pointed this out in his observations from the 1970s. He stated that older people use varieties, while younger people only know them passively but do not use them even when speaking to family members. Middle aged people use them at home but they use the standard language at work. It seems that it is always the school and middle aged people who use the most standard form as they have to when in a community different from the one they grew up in. However, in a survey Niebaum and Macha (1999) found something different. In 1992 in Germany the majority of the people under 29 and a smaller part of the people over 60 said they are good speakers of a dialect than they did in 1983. This also shows that how people relate to regional language varieties is always changing.

            The type and size of settlement people live in is another important aspect that determines what language they speak. Different settlements offer their inhabitants different education, jobs and cultural institutions. They are also not equally developed. As in bigger cities and towns there is generally more need for educated people for certain jobs, in those places people use the standardized Hungarian language more and more because a community with more educated people tends to use the standard language. Another survey by Niebaum and Macha (1999) shows that in Germany among those who received secondary education, the use of varieties is much smaller than among those who attended only primary school. The situation is the same in Hungary as again the new community “forces” people to adopt a common language which is the standard dialect. Szabó (1983) also points out that the standard interferes with the regional varieties mostly in schools and workplaces.

            The language we use also depends on the situation. In a familiar setting – like having lunch with the family or a visit to a friend – people use the language they have grown up with. In this case the speech is also mainly informal and as everyone speaks the same dialect it is comfortable and also natural to use it. In official or public situations, however, people tend to switch to the standard as a willingly employed means of communication as there are differences between the participants and they need a common form of the language.

            There is another important factor most of us may be familiar with, that is identity. This is a more important phenomenon in bigger countries however this is also present in Hungary. As a dialect represents a region people from that part tend to use simply to represent their love towards their homes. According to my experiences people usually represent this by various means. They wear the colors of their hometown’s sport club or – this is a recent phenomenon – despite moving to another city for college or university they do not change the information about their whereabouts on social networking websites. Using a dialect is similar to these acts. It is an easy way to represent where we come from which is an important when our identity is concerned. Most people feel pride when they think of their hometown or home region.

            Using dialects can be either disadvantageous or advantageous depending on the situation. On one hand, when the standard Hungarian dialect was formed, people started to consider it as the only correct form of the language. There are still people who despise those using regional varieties. This is, however, not only true for Hungary. Most countries went through this process with the notable European exceptions of Switzerland, Luxembourg and Norway. In the latter, for example, there are two dialects of the same language which are considered official and there is no standard variety. On the other hand, people who speak both the standard and a dialect may reach a broader public with their speech and they also may be able to more precisely describe certain things (like the Inuit who speak Inuit language can describe snow more accurately with their many words than someone from another country with another language).

            All of this shows that despite the broad use of standard Hungarian, regional language varieties still exist and people use them even today as their language. The ones who use it also change from time to time with factors like age, situation or education, among others, playing an important role in people’s attitude towards it.

References

Imre, S. (1972). Megfigyelések a magyar nyelvjárások változásáról. Általános nyelvészeti tanulmányok, VIII. Budapest, Hungary: Akadémiai Kiadó.

Kiss, J. (Ed.). (2001). Magyar Dialektológia. Budapest, Hungary: Osiris Kiadó.

Kiss, J. (2002). Társadalom és nyelvhasználat: Szociolingvisztikai alapfogalmak. Budapest, Hungary: Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó.

Niebaum, H. & Macha, J. (1999). Einführung in die Dialektologie des Deutschen. Tübingen, Germany: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

Szabó, J. (1983). A mondatszerkesztés nyelvszociológiai vizsgálata a nagykónyi nyelvjárásban. Budapest, Hungary: Akadémiai Kiadó.