Hungarian and Slovak language border pidgin

Question

I was watching a documentary on the hungarian population in Slovakia. At one point in the documentary,they interviewed a lady from the village of Ipeľské Predmostie. When they asked her a question about the relationship between hungarians and slovaks,she answered by saying that they're absolutely friendly and the hungarians and slovaks living there speak both languages. This got me thinking:is there a sort of pidgin,formed by the mix of the slovak and hungarian languages?How do these different ethnic groups communicate with one another in daily life?And also,if anyone knows about influences of the hungarian language in the slovak speech near the border,a clarification would be highly appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

I cannot say about those regions of Slovakia specifically, but in other areas which after Trianon became part of other states there are no Hungarian-based pidgins. In Vojvodina, Transylvania, Banat and around Sopron and Bratislava today, I have not heard nor heard of such a pidgin or creole.

Usually minorities, whether at the national level or the local level, are the better linguists. But one other way this can work itself out naturally is that both groups speak in their own language but understand the other at least passively. If there is sufficient good will neither takes offence.

Historically there was a pidgin in Austro-Hungary, Army Slavic or Armee-Slawisch. Both German and Hungarian were dominant and thus lingua franca at times, it varied by the exact region and era. But because of the linguistic landscape of the wider region, solid knowledge of common Slavic is very useful even today.

Despite being from very distinct families these languages actually have many common words anyway, especially in the dialects and for the things used most in daily life in these places. Hungarian loanwords are very dominant in culinary lexicon. On the other hand Hungarian has many loanwords from Slavic, and many loan translations from German.