Anita Lintner: Common noun code changes in the language of the Hungarian press in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars
This study deals with the issue of written language code changes, mainly common noun changes. The source is the Hungarian press in (Czecho)slovakia between the two world wars. The study tries to discover the motives that within a closed frame (in the language of the press) resulted the common noun code changes. It also intends to reveal in what situation do the Hungarian reporters decide in such a way that they „put“ the elements, element lines of the (Czecho)slovak language in a direct way and what is (could be) the reason of this decision. After the introduction and a short methodological chapter the authors tries to summarize some of the theoretical issues of written code changes, then in the most lengthy part of the study the goals of common noun code changes are analyzed (for example authentication, style effect, delimiting) by introducing extensive sample materials. Finally, the connections of code change and between-language communication (translation) are analyzed.
The changes generally rise up in well-defined functions. The most code-changes happen in order to reach authentication that is important from practical aspects and to reach style effect (and/or delimiting).
The author tries to select the examined newspapers representatively – examines newspapers with different political orientation from the beginning, middle and end of the period. Although, it seems that neither the date of issue, nor political orientation influences relevantly the appearance of coda changes. There are newspapers in which the author found minimal examples of common noun code changes (such example is the Kassai Munkás – in translation „The Kassa Worker“ from 1920, Reggel – in translation „Morning“ from 1920 and Magyar Nap – in translation „Hungarian Sun“ from 1937), and in which the author found rather lot (Kassai Napló – in translation „Kassa Diary“ – from 1920, Munkás – in translation „Worker“ – from 1931, Prágai Magyar Hírlap – in translation „Prague Hungarian News“ – from 1929, Magyar Újság – in translation „Hungarian Newspaper“ from 1937). Most of the Slovak expressions imbedded in the articles stem from internal, contextual reasons: vocabulary of journalists, their expertise in the two language, emotional or prestige motives. The journalists’ expertise in the Czechoslovak language is connected to the vast number of spelling and grammatical mistakes present in the examples. It is also frequent that the Slovak language insertions are written with Hungarian spelling. I all is not surprising, since at that time the Slovak language of Hungarian journalists was not good and they had no opportunities to check on the grammatical issues (the first grammatical rules were published in the work of Samo Czambel in 1931).