n 2011, the Parliament declared November 13th as the Day of the Hungarian Language, because on this day in 1844, the law that made Hungarian the official state language in our country was adopted. Since then, we have officially lived as a nation in our own language. The posture required for this: we must look at the world through Hungarian eyes, because – as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at the inauguration of the Trianon monument in Sátoraljaújhely – “whoever looks at the world in Hungarian sees with the eyes of Saint Stephen.”
So, we practice this Saint Stephen-like vision. No sooner had the hundred years of Hungarian solitude ended than we were hit by an avalanche of boundless rights’ proliferation and the cancel culture that sees everything in black and white. In this madness, it’s not so self-evident to greet the European among whites, the Hungarian among compatriots. It also goes against the rainbow mainstream if, while respecting otherness, we swear to protect our self-identity. Yet we’re only doing what they consider desirable around the world: we embrace who we are and we’re proud of it.
Being Hungarian today is considered a political stance. For us who grew up in the Romanian communist dictatorship, this is not unfamiliar, but the motherland is just now learning what it’s like when something that was as natural as breathing suddenly requires daily decision-making and stepping up.
Since we’ve invoked our state-founding holy king, perhaps it’s no exaggeration to call Ferenc Kazinczy the founder of our mother tongue. He didn’t just renew language, but also style; he wanted not just a good, but a beautiful Hungarian language.
Kazinczy and his contemporaries didn’t create a counter-culture, they didn’t recreate the “house of the Hungarian language” out of defiance and protest. Instead, with that intellectual courage characteristic only of the greatest, they polished the toolkit of Hungarian thought. As Kazinczy put it: “Ideas cannot be clarified where language confuses them.”
Today we experience for ourselves that confused ideas can easily lead us astray. Here’s my favorite example right away: tolerance in its original sense, as we cultivated it in Europe, means acceptance, endurance, not approval. Yet today we are expected to don it as an ideological straitjacket in its distorted sense, stretched to the point of submission. We won’t, we can’t. The system of dictates, the command structure of imperial centers is not our culture. Although we didn’t want to, we were able to try it, and it wasn’t good.
Our culture is the sparking of free spirits. Our repository of ideas strengthens through the sensible debate of free thoughts. Kazinczy encouraged and established in the Hungarian world the demand that we should decide on emerging intellectual achievements in an unbiased, open, often ruthless, but as far as possible fair debate in front of the public. These were the so-called “pen battles,” which gained many enemies and of course many friends and comrades-in-arms.
In any case, a new public debate culture was born that disregarded titles and ranks. Without Kazinczy’s generation, it would have been more difficult to create space for ideas and innovations, that is, for the modern political environment. The Hungarian thought was conceived, took shape, and then Hungarian words were followed by deeds.
We still live in this today. This is our heritage, which ensures a livable future.
Notes:
Historical context:
November 13, 1844: The date when Hungarian became the official state language, replacing Latin and German in the Kingdom of Hungary.
Treaty of Trianon (1920): A peace agreement after World War I that resulted in Hungary losing approximately two-thirds of its territory and population. The “hundred years of Hungarian solitude” likely refers to the period following this treaty.
Cultural and political figures:
Saint Stephen: The first King of Hungary (1000-1038 AD), who established the Christian Hungarian state.
Viktor Orbán: The current Prime Minister of Hungary, known for his nationalist and conservative policies.
Ferenc Kazinczy (1759-1831): A key figure in Hungarian language reform, who modernized and standardized the Hungarian language.
Linguistic and cultural concepts:
Language renewal (nyelvújítás): A period of linguistic reform in Hungarian history, led by Kazinczy and others.
“Pen battles” (pennacsaták): Public debates and discussions about language and literature in 19th century Hungary.
Hungarian minority experience:
The text mentions experiences under “Romanian communist dictatorship”, referring to the situation of ethnic Hungarians in Romania during the communist era.
Homeland Dictionary 