Századok – 2016
2016 / 5. szám - TANULMÁNY - Kövér György: "Statisztikai asszimiláció" Magyarországon, 1880-1910
1258 KÖVÉR GYÖRGY „STATISTICAL ASSIMILATION” IN THE KINGDOM OF HUNGARY 1880-1910 by György Kövér Summary During the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy the official censuses only from 1880 include questions inquiring about language. On the western side of the Monarchy they inquired about the colloquial or everyday language (Umgangssprache), whereas the Hungarian census focused on the „mother tongue” (Muttersprache). It is not commonly known, that in the Hungarian Kingdom between 1880 and 1910, however, the relevant question changed. In 1880 it was formulated as “What is your mother tongue? (Moreover, what other language of the country do you speak?)”, whereas from 1900 onwards, probably in an attempt to reproduce the question formulated on the Cisleithanian side, it was “What is your mother tongue, that is, the language you consider as yours, the language in which you are most fluent and like to speak?”. Thus, while in 1880 the focus was clearly on the mother tongue, during the census immediately preceding World War I the focus shifted to asking the subject to reveal his or her relation to the spoken language. According to these censuses at the turn of the century the surge of those with Hungarian as “mother tongue” is quite spectacular, in absolute numbers. On the other side, in relative terms the progress of Hungarian speakers crossing the mystical 50 percent figure was more gradual. The main question of this paper: how we can interpret these census data from the point of social history? What is the “statistical contribution” to these “results” considered as a “successful Hungarian assimilation”? We try to give an answer through „changing the scale”, meaning both on the macro and micro level.
