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CHAPTER 5 BACKGROUND INFORMATION HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES: LANGUAGE USE PATTERNS Similar to other ethnic immigrant communities, the Hungarian-American immigrant communities are also subject to language shift, that is, to the gradual expansion of the use of English as opposed to Hungarian. The most striking decline in the use of Hungarian can be observed in such domains as work, as within the family as well as within ethnic Hungarian institutions. This gradual process eventually leads to the complete language loss of Hungarian typically completed by the third generation of Hungarian-Americans””. When examining the process of language shift in Hungarian-American communities, a chronological order, proceeding toward the most recent period will be applied. In the early Hungarian-American communities (New Brunswick, New Jersey; McKeesport, Pennsylvania; and Bridgeport, Connecticut), people were living in close-knit communities together with Hungarian fellow workers close to steel mills and mines, where they worked as unskilled or semi-skilled workers. For example, in Cleveland, and Delray, most of the Hungarian immigrants spoke Hungarian with their fellow workers?”®. As they were employed as unskilled or semi-skilled workers in large steel mills and mines working in Hungarian clusters, together with their fellow Hungarians, they did not learn a lot of English and used mainly Hungarian at work and in the family, as well*”®. Consequently, in terms of their Hungarian language shift and maintenance patterns, these early settlers were more, consciously or unconsciously, motivated to maintain their Hungarian culture and Hungarian language. Prevalent language shift in the Hungarian-American communities started with the emergence of the first Hungarian-American second generation. This generation was born as American citizens, or they grew up in the USA, and the majority of them were (near) native English speakers. Although family life as well as the activities of the most important Hungarian communal organizations (fraternal insurance associations) and churches were conducted in Hungarian, and second-generation Hungarian-Americans went to Hungarian schools and could write and speak in Hungarian”, the 227 Csilla Bartha, Nyelvhasználat, nyelvmegtartäs, nyelvcsere amerikai közösségekben, in: Nóra Kovacs — László Szarka, (eds.), Tér és terep, Tanulmányok az etnicitás kérdésköréből, Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 2002, 121 228 Papp, Hungarian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland, 229; Bartha, Social and linguistic characteristics of immigrant language shift, 413 22° Bartha, Social and linguistic characteristics of immigrant language shift, Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 413 230 Fishman, Hungarian Language Maintenance in the US, 10; Papp, Hungarian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland, 133 + 88 +
