434 ANNUAL EEPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



order to maintain resistance against German and Hungarian en- 

 croachments. 



The Slo^'aks are mountain dwellers who have but slightly fra- 

 ternized with Bohemians and Moravians, notwithstanding close racial 

 and linguistic affinity. The course of centuries failed to change 

 their customs or the mode of life led in the western Carpathians. 

 The Hungarian plain unfolded itself below their rocky habitation 

 without tempting them to forsake the seclusion of their native 

 valleys. Their language holds its own as far east as the Laborec 

 Valley. Junction with Polish is effected in the Tatra. 



11. THE AREA OF HUNGARIAN SPEECH. 



The presence in Europe of Hungarians, a race bearing strong 

 linguistic and physical affinity to Turki tribesmen, is perhaps best 

 explained by the j^rolific harvests yielded by the broad vallej'^s of 

 the Danube and Theiss. Huns, Avars, Hunagars, and Magyars, one 

 and all Asiatics, w^andering into Europe successiveh^, were enticed 

 into abandonment of nomadism by the fertility of the boundless 

 Alfold. Western influences took solid root among these descend- 

 ants of eastern ancestors after their conversion to Catholicism and 

 the adoption of the Latin alphabet. So strongly did they become 

 permeated by the spirit of occidental civilization that the menace of 

 absorption by the Turks, their own kinsmen, was rendered abor- 

 tive whenever the Sultan's hordes made successful advances to- 

 ward Vienna. At the same time fusion wdth the Germans was 

 prevented by the oriental origin of the race. The foundation of a 

 separate European nation was thus laid in the Hungarian plains. 



The linguistic boundary between Hungarian and German is 

 found in the eastern extremity of the Austrian Alps.^ The south- 

 ern side of the Danube Valley between Pressburg and Eaab is Ger- 

 man. Magyar spreads, however, to the north to meet the Slovak 

 area. The line then crosses the upper valleys of the Eaab and attains 

 the Drave, which forms the linguistic boundary between Croatian 

 and Hungarian. East of the Theiss contact with the Rumanian of 

 Transylvania begins in the vicinity of Arad on the Maros Eiver 

 and extends northward in an irregular line, hugging the western 

 outlines of the Transylvania Alps, and attaining the sources of the 

 Theiss. In the northeastern valley of this river Hungarian and 

 Ruthenian language areas become contiguous. 



The area of Magyar speech thus defined lacks homogeneity in its 

 western section lying west of the Danube, where important enclaves 

 of Germans are solidly entrenched. The central portion of the 



1 p. Hunfalvy, Die Ungarn Oder Magyaren, pp. 104-120. Prochaska, Vienna, 1881. 



