Hungarian dialects
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The dialects of the Hungarian language identified by Ethnologue are: Great Hungarian Plain, West Danube, Danube-Tisza (territories between the two rivers), King's Pass Hungarian (Pass in Apuseni Mountains), Northeast Hungarian, Northwest Hungarian, Székely and West Hungarian. These dialects are, for the most part, mutually intelligible.
The Hungarian Csángó dialect, which is mentioned but not listed separately by Ethnologue, is spoken primarily in Bacău County in eastern Romania. The Csángó Hungarian group has been largely isolated from other Hungarian people, and they therefore preserved a dialect closely resembling an earlier form of Hungarian.[1]
The Hungarian researchers distinguish ten dialects. The dialects are as follows:
- Western Transdanubia,
- Central Transdanubia – Little Hungarian Plain,
- Southern Transdanubia,
- Southern Great Plain,
- region of Palóc,
- region of Tisza–Körös,
- Northeast Hungary,
- Transylvanian Plain,
- Székely,
- Moldavian (Csángó),
Classification
There is a regular sound change in some Hungarian dialects by omitting the sound /l/ at the end of the words and lengthening the preceding vowel. In case of vacakol <vaczakol> (potters about), singular third person, people say in some Hungarian dialects vacakó, instead of hozol → hozó "you bring", viszel → visző <vis> "you take" and for kapol → kapó "you get". In many cases syllable-final /l/ is also vocalized in the middle of words, e.g. szöllő → szőlő "grape". Furthermore, a similar change has happened to the partner-sound /r/ by the same rule: mikor → mikó "when", and akkor → akkó "then".