É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.
ORMOS, István: Goldziher's Mother Tongue: A Contribution to the Study of the Language Situation in Hungary in the Nineteenth Century
GOLDZIHER'S MOTHER TONGUE was is attested by the fact that in the period under discussion several decrees issued by the Minister of the Interior dealt with the question of when and how it was permissible for Israelites to revert to their "real names", i.e. to replace the given name that had been "entered erroneously" into the birth-register. While there can be no doubt that mistakes were relatively common there were in fact many ways in which mistakes could occur, e.g. the name had been communicated to the rabbi by a friend or the midwife several days later; the rabbi, ignorant of Hungarian, had misunderstood the name or simply replaced it with a similarly sounding Hebrew one, etc, etc. - it can still be assumed that in the great majority of cases the individuals merely wanted to replace their original Hebrew or German names with a Magyar one, or simply to legalize names they had tacitly assumed long ago. 1/4 (When reading the text of these decrees one has the impression that the changing of given names was very widespread in those days.) Goldziher lived in a period of rapid transition in a multi-ethnic and bi-, or rather multi-lingual town, as a member of a bilingual religious community. There can be no doubt that he himself grew up multilingual from very early childhood on, especially if we consider his phenomenal gift for languages. In view of this state of affairs, and given the lack of unequivocal statements and information, the question of what his mother tongue was cannot be decided with absolute certainty. However if this question has any relevance - it can be stated, with due reservation, that a careful evaluation of available data leads us to believe that his mother tongue was probably a variety of German, probably with Jewish features in it. It is also virtually certain that he learned Hungarian very early, and that as a Hungarian patriot, he considered Hungarian to be his national language, the language closest to his heart. He also acquired, relatively early in life, an excellent knowledge of Standard Literary German ( Hochdeutsch ), and used it extensively throughout his life, both privately and in scholarly publications. 17 4 On the decrees issued in 1892 and 1912 see 'Kútfők. A m. kir. vallás- és közoktatásügyi miniszternek 1912. évi 84,561. számú körrendelete az izraeliták utóneveinek kiigazítása tárgyában' [Sources. General Decree n" 84.561/1912 of the Royal Hungarian Minister of Religion and Public Education 011 the Subject of the Correction of the First Names of Israelites], Magyar-Zsidó Szemle 29 (1912), 338-340. 243
