The population relocations, during and immediately after World War II, accelerated the process of linguistic assimilation of cultural minorities. This homogenisation culminated the century-old deficit in mother tongue teaching of minorities, the disappearance of closed communities and the growing uniformity caused by mass communication.
In 1995 the government ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect to Croatian, German, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, and Slovene, but not to Romani (as opposed to at least 11 countries in this last respect). In fact, only a minority of Roma people speak a Gypsy dialect.
To counterbalance these factors, the Hungarian Radio’s 4thchannel (MR4) broadcasts 12 hours (from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.) in the same 13 minority languages each day: two hours in Croatian, German, Romanian, Serbian and Slovak, and half an hour for Slovene, Polish, Greek, Armenian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Gypsy (Romani and Boyash), and Ruthenian. There is a 57-minute special programme for Roma every weekday—all Roma in the country speak Hungarian and only 17% of them speak Hungarian as a second language.
The national public television broadcasts 4 regular weekly programmes for Croatian, German, Romanian, Serbian and Slovak minorities, one more for the Roma, and a combined programme for 6 more cultures – these all carry Hungarian subtitles. The average length of all these is 16 hours per month.
Since 2019, an entertainment channel on Roma culture (Dikh Tv) has been broadcasting, partly using the Romani language.
Hungary has not had an official language policy or strategy. In 2014 the new Hungarian Language Strategy Institute was set up, which currently operates as a division of the Institute for Hungarian Studies.
The practice of bilingual street-signs is increasing in villages of mixed ethnicity.
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