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CHAPTER 5 BACKGROUND INFORMATION New Brunswick analyzing second-generation Hungarian-American soldiers" letters sent home during World War II. Her findings show that the majority of second-generation speakers had a balanced dual ethnic identity, were perfectly bilingual, though, preferred the use English for written communication. The Hungarian language knowledge of the subjects showed some signs of attrition, but it appropriately fulfilled its communicative function”. HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES: A HISTORY OF BILINGUAL CONTACT The first and most numerous Hungarian wave of immigration (1.5 million people), who came to the US in the period of 1870 and 1914 was propelled by socioeconomic reasons.*” Mostly, people from the rural areas of Hungary came and settled down in the traditional Hungarian communities in such as in Ohio, New Jersey, close to big steel mills and mines where they were employed mostly as semi- or unskilled workers’™. These early settlers came to the US to earn some money and then to go back to Hungary”, they never really wanted to or could integrate in the US host society”™. As these early immigrants settled close the steel mills and mines, they were also living in close-knit communities with their fellow workers, many of whom were Hungarians”. In the 1930s in New Brunswick, for example, one-fifth of the entire Hungarian-American population working in steel mills and mines lived in a few nearby streets and constituted a very close-knit community”. The following waves of immigration were propelled by political rather than economic reasons, and most of the immigrants left Hungary with no intention of returning. After the fall of the liberal democrat revolution, in the period between 1921 and 1940, 38,541 Hungarian liberal democrats entered the United States?”. The majority of them were highly qualified intellectuals”. 200 Tlona Kovacs, Katonalevelek — Nyelvtudas, identitastudat. Amerikai magyarok masodik generációja az amerikai hadseregben a második világháború idején, in: Nóra Kovács, (ed.), Tanulmányok a diaszpóráról. Budapest, Gondolat, 2005 According to Papp (1981), between 1870 and 1920, an estimated 1,078, 974 number of Hungarians immigrated to the United States. In: Papp, Hungarian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland Julianna Puskas, Ties that Bind, Ties that Divide. New York, Holmes & Meier, 2000, 119; Anna Fenyvesi, Hungarian in the USA, Fenyvesi, Hungarian in the USA, 267 Papp, Hungarian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland, 105; Fenyvesi, Hungarian in the USA, 266 Kontra, Fejezetek a South Bend-i magyar nyelvhasznalatböl, 24 Papp, Hungarian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland, 105 Kovacs, Katonalevelek, 158 Papp, Hungarian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland, 129 Fishman, Hungarian Language Maintenance in the US, 7-8 20 20. 18 203 20 = 205 20 a 207 208 s 84 ¢
