Liszka József (szerk.): Az Etnológiai Központ Évkönyve 2000-2001 - Acta Ethnologica Danubiana 2-3. (Dunaszerdahely-Komárom, 2001)
1. Tanulmányok - Paládi-Kovács Attila: Természeti tájak és nyelvhatárok a régi Felső-Magyarországon
cleared the forest and grazed flocks and later also cultivated ever larger areas. They maintained their Roman Catholic religion but by the 1860s spoke Polish only at home, using Slovak elsewhere. In the 18th century Ruthenian and Slovak enclaves arose within the Hungarian-speaking region too. Some of the latter, living in the forests and isolated by the mountains, have maintained their Slovak language right up to the present. However, the majority of the Ruthenians abandoned their original language either for Hungarian or for Slovak. In the course of the 18th and 19th centuries not only the German, Ruthenian, Czech and Polish settlements and local communities mentioned became assimilated into the Slovak people, but also Hungarian and German village communities that had been settled earlier. Their fate was spontaneous assimilation not just in Northern Gömör and Abaúj, but also in Szepes and Sáros counties. With the assimilation of the enclaves a homogeneous Slovak-speaking territory arose. However, the traces of the former enclaves can be seen in the ethnographic, word geography and dialectology maps, including some maps of the Slovak Ethnological Atlas. Etnografický atlas Slovenska. Bratislava, 1990). The foreign-language enclaves which survived the longest in the Slovak-speaking territory too were those which were isolated in the mountains, remote from towns and main transport routes The natural environment, the isolated ecological niches and small “life spaces” were of exceptional significance in the preservation of ethnic character and local culture. References Balogh Pál 1902 A népfajok Magyarországon (Nations and Ethnic Groups in Hungary). Budapest Brukner Győző 1922 A Szepesség és népe (County Szepes and its People). Budapest Bulla Béla - Mendöl Tibor 1947 A Kárpát-medence földrajza (Geography of the Carpathian Basin). Budapest Czoernig, K.F. 1855 Ethnographische Karte der oesterreichischen Monarchie. Wien Györffy György 1987 Az Árpád-kori Magyarország történeti földrajza (Historical Geography of Hungary in the Epoch of Árpád-Dynasty in the 10th-13th Centuries). Budapest Gréb, Julius 1932 Zipser Volkskunde. Kesmark-Reichenberg Hardesty, D.L. 1972 The Human Ecological Niche. American Anthropology, Vol. 74. No. 3. 458-466. Hunfalvy János 1867 Gömör és Kishont törvényesen egyesült vármegyének leírása (Monograph of County Gömör-Kishont). Pest lia Bálint 1942-1976 Gömör vármegye (History of County Gömör) Vol. I-IV. Budapest 1957 Die walachische Bevölkerung der Herrschaften Murány, Csetnek und Krasznahorka. Studia Slavica III. 113-148. Kádár László 1943 A magyar ember a magyar tájban (Hungarians in their Natural Environment). In: Bartucz Lajos ed.: A magyar nép, pp. 69-90. Budapest 169
