The role of the Hungarian language in European polyglot dictionaries of the 16th and 17th centuries

Grzeszak, Anna (2024) The role of the Hungarian language in European polyglot dictionaries of the 16th and 17th centuries. HUNGARIAN STUDIES: A JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR HUNGARIAN STUDIES AND BALASSI INSTITUTE, 38 (S). pp. 87-110. ISSN 0236-6568

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Abstract

The present study aims to determine the role of the Hungarian language in European polyglot dictionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries and thus to establish its position within the group of European languages. The study is based on earlier findings by Gabriele Stein (1989) concerning the role of English in 16th-century multilingual wordlists, and it addresses two questions: 1) How often was the Hungarian language included in polyglots compared to other European languages? 2) Did Hungarian hold a similar position to other vernaculars in the dictionaries considered? It was examined which languages were included in the polyglots published during the period under discussion and how many times each vernacular appeared in a dictionary. Moreover, the contents of selected dictionaries were analysed. Results indicate that Hungarian played an important, though not key role in European polyglot dictionaries of the 16th and 17th centuries and that its position among other European languages was not marginal at the time.

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