About an online dictionary of the pluricentric Hungarian language

A pluricentric language is a language that is used in at least two countries where it has the official status of a state, commonwealth or regional language with at least partially its own (codified) norms that usually contribute to the personal identity of speakers. Pluricentric languages have one dominant variant and (one or) several non-dominant varieties. As a result of the political fragmentation of the Hungarian language area that developed after the First World War, and then, confirmed by the peace treaties after the Second World War, the Hungarian language is one of the pluricentric languages in Europe. The article examines the results of close linguistic contacts in non-dominant varieties of the modern Hungarian language used outside Hungary. The consequences of language contacts are highlighted on the basis of lexical borrowings, which are fixed in a specific online dictionary. The dictionary consists of borrowed words of foreign origin used by autochthonous Hungarian minorities living in the Carpathian Basin outside Hungary. In addition to words and phrases that are used exclusively in the speech and writing of Hungarians in countries neighboring Hungary, words that are also used in Hungary, but with a different meaning, were also collected in the database. As of the end of September 2022, the dictionary database contained 5,034 dictionary entries (words). Since this online loanword list contains direct borrowings from many languages of the Carpathian Basin that are in contact with Hungarian (mostly from the official or state languages of Hungary's neighboring countries, including Slovak, Ukrainian, Romanian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, and German), the database is a rich source for the study of contacts between Hungarian and Indo-European languages. Based on the material of the online dictionary, it was found that among the lexical borrowings of the Hungarian language –as a result of centuries-old contacts between Hungarian and various Slavic languages –borrowings of Slavic origin constitute the largest layer of vocabulary of foreign origin in the Hungarian language. The result of the project is a dictionary database that provides an opportunity for a comparative analysis of the vocabulary of non-dominant variants of the pluricentric Hungarian language.