An experiment for a comparative study: the linguistic landscape in southern Slovakia, Szeklerland and Transcarpathian villages
by Petteri Laihonen and István Csernicskó
Our paper presents a general description of the linguistic landscape of six villages. We present a village in southern Slovakia, Szeklerland, and Transcarpathia, where the language of oral communication within the settlement is exclusively Hungarian. Furthermore, some villages characterized by oral bilingualism. The results are compared to each other and to previous researches. In the second part of the study, the types of texts that appear in a non-Hungarian language are briefly analyzed, and most of them appear only in Hungarian language. We also examine which areas are best characterized by the use of bilingual signs in the examined villages. Finally, we compare the results with the general image that can be made on the basis of other sociolinguistic researches on the use of the Hungarians living in the given regions.
Key-words: linguistic landscape, southern Slovakia, Szeklerland, Transcarpathia, bilingualism