Language Research

HUNGARIANS

One of the biggest grievances of the Hungarians living in Slovakia was the limitation of native-language use. The Law on State Language, adopted in November 1995, did not regulate the use of minority languages in public life. That is, no law on the use of minority languages was passed at the same time or within a set deadline. In fact, the minorities had to wait four years for the passage of such a law.

Even though the Constitution allows the members of minorities to deal with official bodies and to submit requests in their native-language, the Law on State Language mandated the official bodies to respond to these requests only in the Slovak language. Due to the lack of a law on minority languages, native-language use in schools and cultural institutions could be restricted by means of lower-level legal provisions. For example, the making of audio and videotapes for children less than 12 years old was authorized only in the Slovak language. By referring to the Law on State Language, the handing out of bilingual report cards along with the keeping of school records in the native-tongue were banned in 1997 in Hungarian-language schools.

According to the 1996 data, 8.8% of Slovakia's enrolled students were of Hungarian nationality but only 6.8% of them attended Hungarian-language schools. Of all the Hungarian children of school age, 26.2% were not enrolled in Hungarian-language schools mostly because there was no Hungarian-language school in at least 130 localities where ethnic Hungarians constituted the majority of the population. The number of Hungarian-language schools and classes has been decreasing for years.

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