The Use of Toponyms in the Spontaneous Speech of Hungarians Living in Vojvodina and Prekmurje

Abstract

The paper discusses for the first time the toponyms occurring in the spontaneous speech of Hungarians living in the bilingual regions of Vojvodina (Serbia) and Prekmurje (Slovenia). The author aims to reveal the patterns and general trends in the use of Hungarian and Slavic forms of toponyms in the speech of informants of two contact regions. Another task is to outline the features of morphological adaptation of borrowed place names to the case system of the Hungarian language (cases expressing direction and location). The data for the study was collected from 2012 to 2019 during the author’s field research, specifically by conducting semistructured interviews with informants. It is stated that the interlocutors use both Hungarian and Slavic toponyms in their spontaneous speech. We can often find variability: in the speech of one informant, both options may occur. The use of the Slavic form of a toponym is accompanied by metalinguistic comments, explaining the choice of this form in the narrative. The comments can be brief or more detailed. Both Hungarian and Slavic toponyms are used mainly with external local cases (supersessive, sublative, delative). However, there are cases of interference with Slavic languages, when Hungarian variants of toponyms, as well as borrowed toponyms from Slavic languages, are used in internal local cases (equivalents of Slavic case constructions), but this is less common. In broad terms, there’s a lot of uniformity regarding the use of toponyms in the speech of the respondents from Vojvodina and Prekmurje. It now is planned to verify whether similar processes occur in the speech of Hungarians living in other bordering countries (both Slavic and non-Slavic), to build a more comprehensive typology. Slavic forms of toponyms should be included in the Termini dictionary which lists borrowings in the speech of Hungarian diaspora.