Quo Vadis? The (Number Of) Hungarians in Slovakia According to the Nationality and Mother Tongue Data of the 2021 Census

The study deals with the development of the number of Hungarians in Slovakia based on the data of the 2021 census. In addition to the data on nationality and mother tongue, for the first time the so-called second nationality was also surveyed. In recent decades, more people belonged to each national minority according to mother tongue than to nationality. For Hungarians, the relationship between these two indicators is very close. For decades, approximately 10% more people declared themselves Hungarian by mother tongue than by nationality. Based on combinations of data by nationality and mother tongue, we can distinguish 3 types of Hungarian affiliation: those belonging to the core group declared themselves Hungarian according to both indicators, and those belonging to the other two types declared themselves Hungarian for one of the variables. The majority of those declaring themselves as Hungarians on the second place indicated that their mother tongue was Hungarian, but they have increased the number of those with Hungarian nationality in a negligible extent.