Oldal 83 [83]
OCR
SOCIOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH ON HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES communities from the perspective of Hungarian language maintenance efforts. In his monograph, Fishman’* examined the Hungarian-American community’s organizational efforts aimed at maintaining the Hungarian language and traditions from the beginning (the 1870s) to the 1960s with special emphasis on the traditional Hungarian-American ethnic organizations such as Hungarian Catholic Churches, schools, the media, and special Hungarian events. He claims that Hungarian-American communities — alike other central and eastern European immigrant groups — have been caught in the supposedly contradictory dilemma of either maintaining their ethnic traditions and language or trying to be fully integrated in mainstream society. The success of the Hungarian-American community’s maintenance efforts was exacerbated by the American society’s stigma attached to these immigrants because of their rural background and later because of Hungary’s political affiliation with Germany. Fishman claims that with the emergence of the first second-generations, Hungarian maintenance efforts already weakened, however, these second-generation members could still read, write, and speak in Hungarian. The position of the Hungarian language was further undermined by the post-World War II period and by the third generation of HungarianAmericans; Hungarian language loss had been complete, even though this generation did not feel the stigma attached to previous Hungarian generations. Parallel to this, the use of Hungarian in the traditional ethnic Hungarian organizations had also been on the decline. Fishman points out that the most successful Hungarian organization in cherishing Hungarian traditions and language has been the Hungarian Scout Organization. The significance of Fishman’s monograph is that it was the first comprehensive study analyzing the process of Hungarian maintenance efforts both from a historical and a sociolinguistic perspective. Later research concentrated on particular communities, especially on the ‘old-timer’ Hungarian-American communities founded by the early waves of Hungarian-American immigrants. Papp published her research findings on Hungarian-Americans and their communities in Cleveland, Ohio’”. Examining this particular community from the perspective of Hungarian language use, she has also pointed out that although second-generation speakers of Hungarian were perfectly bilingual; the concept of Hungarian for them had already changed. However, it was World War II that significantly weakened Hungarian language use among second-generation speakers. According to her, 50,000 Hungarian-Americans served in the US army during World War II, the majority of whom after the war did not return to their original Hungarian 4 Fishman, Hungarian Language Maintenance in the US 195 Susan M. Papp, Hungarian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland, Cleveland, Cleveland State, 1981 +81 +
