ON WHY A NEW HUNGARIAN LINGUISTIC ATLAS IS NECESSARY

Data collection for The Atlas of Hungarian Dialects took place between 1949 and 1960 (with follow-up collection completed by 1964) in the Hungarian language area of the Carpathian Basin. In the half-century or so that has elapsed since, large-scale social, cultural and linguistic changes, ones involving both language use and language awareness, have occurred within the Hungarian linguistic community. All those changes, as well as discipline-internal reasons, motivate the necessity of designing a new, up-to-date atlas. In particular, the facts that traditional peasant economy has come to an end and that local dialects have lost ground, the requirement that regional spoken language be descriptively studied at a macro-level, the scientific importance of studying completed and ongoing changes within the Hungarian language area now encompassing parts of as many as eight different countries, the ensuing possibility of a comparative study of dialectal speech, and the need for 'rescue excavations' in some cases are all factors contributing to that motivation. The author analyses some possibilities of carrying that idea into effect, and argues for a cooperation of Hungarian dialectologists, for thorough preparations to be undertaken, and for the necessity of support coming from the research management authorities of the country.