# Hungarian Ethnic Groups, Ethnographic Regions and Pockets of Survival

CHAPTERS

- Transdanubia
- Upper Hungary
- Great Plain
- Transylvania

The folk culture of the Hungarians is uniform in its basic structure and major characteristics, just as the dialects are not divided by differences that hinder comprehension. Yet we have recorded smaller and larger groups, regions, and pockets surrounded by other ethnic groups, which differ more or less from their immediate or distant neighbours. This difference, however, is never manifested in the entirety of the culture, but perhaps only in certain phenomena, or at most in groups of phenomena. Certain ethnic groups that remain as pockets within the Hungarian whole are separated from their neighbours by characteristic elements. The differentiating elements take new shapes and change just as the entirety of folk culture is not a static unit, because it is constantly renewing itself and abandoning features that for some reason have become superfluous.

We are able to trace the roots of the formation of ethnic groups back to {35.} the Magyar Conquest. Among the eight tribes that settled here there could well have been differences in origin, culture, and occupation, even though these differences may have been washed away by later eras. The diversified geographical conditions in the mountains, steppes, and swampy regions of the Carpathian Basin affected the development of local cultures as factors determining life style. Differences were emphasized by historical factors such as the fact that in the age of feudalism certain groups and areas enjoyed greater or lesser privileges that differentiated them from the other groups. Similarly, in various sections of the country economic and social differences also contributed to the development of ethnic groups, in which in certain cases we can discover the feeling of identity. Some groups of Hungarians living near the Rumanians, South Slavs and Slovakians took over particular characteristics into their own culture that emphasized their separation. All this makes it beyond doubt that ethnic groups, ethnological regions and pockets are formations that look back upon a longer or shorter historical past.

Broadly speaking, we can separate or distinguish them only by taking the following considerations into account. The people who live in isolated pockets in the main incorporate the typical characteristics of their own ethnic group, which differentiate them from their neighbours, and by means of which they can also draw their own boundaries. This is comparable to what the representatives of the surrounding villages or ethnic groups tell about their neighbours. The picture is completed by the characteristics which for some reason are not mentioned by the members of the group in question. We must especially be aware of the feeling of identity and its manifest forms, which may be expressed in endogamy or in some other form.

We can determine the characteristic traits of the culture of certain ethnic groups primarily with the aid of already assembled and evaluated ethnological material, and by relating them to their environment, and perhaps comparing them with those of other ethnic groups in which some of these traits might have originated. Ethnological maps and in general the cartographic delineation of phenomena can provide excellent service in determining the diffusion of elements.

In the case of ethnic groups, the mutual historical sense of cohesion dominates, and often spreads across geographical and administrative boundaries. Geographical factors determine the border in the case of ethnological regions, when the peoples of a mountain district, a swamp area, a river valley, or a vine-growing region belong together. In the determination of a linguistic or ethnic pocket it is the language surrounding the group in question on every side that dominates. Although the delimitation is from a variety of points of view, still the differentiation of the groups is determined by the special colouring of their culture. Thus, if in one case we encounter the naming of a group of people, and in another we make use of the regional or area designation, we are referring in both cases to a certain relatedness with an ethnic tinge of the people who live there. This can appear in very diverse forms, through occupation and costume, or custom to folk poetry.

The most important intellectual cohesive force of a nation is language, the significance of which is ever more increasing in our times. The most {36.} recent research shows that we cannot use the dialect in every respect to determine ethnic groups. As a rule, phonetic and linguistic boundaries only exceptionally coincide with the territories of ethnic groups. Research in word geography offers much better opportunities, but unfortunately we can make use of this in full confidence only in the rare instances when a page of the Atlas of Hungarian Dialects projects on the map the concept suited exactly to our purpose.

After all we can attempt only in broad outlines the introduction of the most important ethnic groups, ethnological regions, and pockets of survival of the Hungarian people. Reaching over present-day borders, partly from geographical, partly from historical consideration, we can divide that part of the Carpathian Basin into four large sections where the mother tongue of the people who live there is Hungarian. Transdanubia (the Dunántúl) is the western territory bordered by the Danube and the Dráva rivers, and there are also smaller Hungarian areas in Austria. Upper Hungary (the Felföld) contains the northern hill and mountain area and reaches into Slovakia. The Great Plain (Alföld) is the central plain of the Carpathian Basin, which continues into Yugoslavia on the south. The Hungarian ethnic groups of Transylvania (Erdély) in places even sweep through the crest of the Eastern Carpathians. We will follow this geographical division in the following chapters.