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

160 József Liszka

Margit Méry (and some other minority Hungarian scholars of Slovakia, such as József Bakos and András Takács) draws the eastern border of the region east of the Váh River. Among these views, from ethnographical point of view, the most acceptable one is that of Margit Méry, who draws the eastern border of the region at the valley of the Žitva River (Podolák 1957: 534; Méryová 1988: 62).7

In any case, it seems that some ethnographically defined regions surprisingly coincide with the western border of the part of the former Ottoman Empire lying north of the Danube River. The thorough investigation of this, however, belongs to the research topics of the future.

Having considered all this, we still cannot clearly define the boundaries of the Mátyusföld region. From a historical point of view, it is probable that the Small Danube, Little Carpathians, and the Váh River form respectively the southern, western, and eastern borders of the region. The northern boundary, from ethnic Hungarian point of view is defined by the Slovak-Hungarian linguistic border. The region itself spreads northwards into the Slovak linguistic area, and in the Slovak literature appears as ‘‘Matúšova zem“ (Land of Matúš), but neither the Slovaks living there know this name, nor the Slovak ethnographers use it as a name of a region (Méryová 1988).

It is also hard to answer whether the linguistic border within Mátyusföld is a cultural border as well. For the last centuries the linguistic border has been moving southward; while the geographic border of the Kis-Alföld region lies north of this line. This question requires further research. We can only form a preliminary assumption, according to which the linguistic and cultural borders of the region do not coincide. However, the northern part of the Mátyusföld region, regardless of the linguistic situation, is a completely different cultural environment, since geographically it does not belong to the Kis-Alföld region. If we accept the linguistic circumscription of the Palóc dialectal area, according to which it lies within the Szenc-Cegléd-Kassa8 triangle, we also have to deal with dialectal borders further dividing the Mátyusföld region. There