András Lajos Róth:
The Commendation of the Mother Tongue in the 18th Century
The study speaks about the activity of many Hungarian authors of different literary genres, mainly from the 18th century, authors who disclose why and under what circumstances they create in their own language, especially in Hungarian (“the born language”). The quoted writers bring a contribution to the lifting of the Hungarian language to the literary standard level. The Hungarian language in this century (18th) is still full of Germanisms and Latinisms. The effort to establish the specialist language in various domains, like law, medicine, philosophy, just like in the case of other languages was a hard road with the Hungarian language too. This can be seen in the analyzed pieces of reading also. Scientists, theologists, lay and ecclesiastical writers contribute to this, taking the risks to be criticized for their mistakes by the posterity. This analysis seizes the triptych of ideas around which the whole process of crystallization of the Hungarian literary language develops: the mother tongue, patriotism and the nation, which is just being formed. The originality of the translations from German, French or English lies in the fact that the translators while finding the adequate terms for the Hungarian version, keeping the original meaning, many times filtering the ideas and words through their soul’s prism they added to the initial sense also their own ideas, thus creating genuine works for the Hungarian literature. They made this effort in the name of and for the nation. What strikes out is the importance of the patrons of art without whom their whole creative work would not have existed.
