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Survey: 4% of Hungarians in Slovakia Prefer to Speak Slovak at Home
Thursday 20 May 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, May 20 (TASR) - Around 75 percent of ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia mainly speak Hungarian at home, according to a survey carried out by the Focus agency on behalf of the Department of Political Sciences at the Philosophical Faculty of St. Cyril and Methodius University in Trnava.
Member of the department Ladislav Machacek told TASR on Thursday that 21 percent of those questioned responded that they use both Hungarian and Slovak at home, while 4 percent said that they prefer Slovak.
The respondents were able to chose the language version of the survey, with 48 percent opting for the Slovak one.
Almost 70 percent of the respondents described the ability to be able to communicate in the state language as very important, 23 percent as important, while 5.3 percent didn't see Slovak as important.
When asked to describe their ethnic status, 68 percent chose the option "I'm a Hungarian living in Slovakia", 16.1 percent favoured the option "I'm a Hungarian", and 13.1 percent picked "I'm a Slovak of Hungarian origin", said Machacek.
The survey further found out that every respondent could speak Hungarian, while 96.8 percent said that they were able to make themselves understood in Slovak, 20 percent in German, 17.7 percent in English, and 15.6 percent in Russian.
The survey, which was carried out in late 2009 with the support of the European Commission, was part of the multi-national ENRI-EAST project: Interplay of European, National and Regional Identities.
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