Hungarian Orthography - Orthography and Society

Orthography and Society

Although orthography only gives instructions how to note down an existing text, usage-related suggestions are also given in most Hungarian linguistic publications (e.g. if a construction should be rephrased or a word should be avoided). These periodicals include Magyar Nyelv, Magyar Nyelvőr, Édes Anyanyelvünk, Magyartanítás, and Nyelvünk és Kultúránk, and several other periodicals have linguistic columns (e.g. Élet és Tudomány). Ádám Nádasdy sometimes touched on orthographic issues in his column popularizing linguistics in Magyar Narancs and in his books based on this column and its forerunners. New entries of Korrektorblog (Proofreader’s Blog – “The mild Grammar Nazi”) are published on the main page of the popular news portal Index.hu.

Linguistic educational programmes were broadcast on television, the most famous being Álljunk meg egy szóra! “Let’s stop for a word”, screened more than 500 occasions between 1987 and 1997, and some of its issues were published in a book.

Apart from the Geographical Names Committee and the manual on geographical names mentioned above, other fields have their specialized orthographical dictionaries, such as economy, medicine, technology, chemistry, and military affairs, as well as collections of examples in periodicals, such as for zoological and botanical names.

Orthographical competitions are organized at primary, secondary, and tertiary level in every year (Zsigmond Simonyi competition for upper primary schools – for students aged 10 to 14 –, József Implom competition for secondary schools, and Béla J. Nagy competition for universities).

Word processors, some Internet browsers and mailing applications are supplied with a Hungarian spellchecker, e.g. Hunspell for OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird. A Hungarian company, MorphoLogic has developed its own proofing tools, which is used in Microsoft Office.

People can seek advice for free in orthography-related and other linguistic topics from the Department of Normative Linguistics at the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences or from the Hungarian Linguistic Service Office.

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Famous quotes containing the word society:

    Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units.
    Valerie Solanas (b. 1940)