Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)

Interethnic spaces

Border region or contact zone 149

taken by the Great Powers after the First and the Second World Wars, who first of all had the ethnic, economic and strategic-political development of Central Europe in sight."

With regard to the language border, Šutaj’s definition is less clear:

If we speak about an ethnic (language) border, we have to interpret it as an auxiliary term which helps in the registration of the changes occurred in the ethnic structure of the Southern Slovakian region. We cannot speak about an ‘ethnic border’ as such, since the major part of communities in this region is ethnically not pure. It is rather a zone where two ethnic groups, two languages, live one next to the other.

(Šutaj 2001: 241)

Šutaj’s views on the Hungarian-Slovak border issue are significant in many regards. His description of the formation of the state border lacking any emotional and ideological connotations is rather unique in the Czechoslovak, Czech or Slovak specialised literature. His observations on the language border are significant, as well. The term “language border" has always served as an auxiliary term to facilitate the definition and description of several ethnic spaces, regions. However, the ethnic or language border has its real competence and significance. In the Central Eastern European zone, over centuries, communities have always been differentiated on the base of ethnic and cultural belonging. True, language borders can never be considered as clear dividing lines, since this would mean a total segregation between two nationalities that live together or next to each other.

According to the data of the 1991 Czechoslovak census, in many regions the dividing lines between communities with Hungarian majority and communities with Slovak majority bear the characteristics of the stripe language border type. However, analysing the data of Galanta, Levice and Rožňava districts and comparing the spatial location of communities with Hungarian majority, we understand that even in present times it is possible to draw a clear boundary which divides the Hungarian from the Slovak majority region (to the north of this boundary the rate of the Hungarian population in com-