THE LANGUAGE ISSUE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Issues of language and culture in the EU exhibit a rather complex pattern and their proper management cannot be conceived of without taking the results of interlinguistic and intercultural research into consideration. EU citizens have to be made ready to confront cultural and civilizational diversity and also to understand that diversity rather than taking it to threaten their national identity. Are educated Hungarians ready to come to grips with linguistic, cultural and civilizational diversity? Are they able to adequately treat and accept such diversity? What are they prepared to do in order to maintain and cultivate their own language, culture, and identity, as well as to hand them down to the next generation? These are the challenges that a nation and a sovereign state necessarily have to face. Hungary, torn out of its former isolation, has suddenly found itself exposed to globalization processes. Linguistics, applied linguistics, language planning and language policy have to deal more and more intensively with the above issues.