Magyar Nyelv [The Hungarian Language] is the official journal of the Society of Hungarian Linguistics, founded in 1904. It was first published in 1905, and has been regularly appearing since then, with no year skipped. Initially, it was financed by donations coming from members of the Society; since 1945 it is financially supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, too. For quite some time now, it has been published quarterly, i.e. in four issues a year, running to an annual total of 32 printed sheets (cca 520 pages).
Its primary aim, when it was founded, was to provide a forum for the scholarly investigation, as well as public and educational cultivation, of the Hungarian language. Upon the widening of the scope of interest of the membership of the Society and the increase in the number of its various sections, the range of topics covered by the journal gradually extended beyond the linguistics of Hungarian to that of other languages studied in Hungary, thus primarily to the fields of Germanistics, Romanistics and Slavistics, as well as general and applied linguistics.
The traditional sections of the journal are (Major) Papers, Minor Contributions, Etymologies, Language Cultivation, Spoken Hungarian, Book Reviews, Miscellanea, Society News, Data from the History of Hungarian, and Letters to the Editor.
The links with related disciplines are mainly represented by papers on history, prehistory, literary history and ethnography. The journal also covers the history of linguistics and regularly informs its readers of current events of linguistics in Hungary. In its Book Reviews column, naturally, books published in Hungary and abroad are both reviewed.
During its almost a hundred years of existence, the authors of this journal always included the most prominent representatives of linguistics in Hungary, along with linguists from abroad, especially from neighbouring countries, as well as younger generations of linguists in this country. The editors have been among the best known Hungarian linguists of their days. The editorial work was characterised by accuracy and punctual appearance. Each issue is published in 700 to 800 copies and quite a number of copies are sold abroad.
Dezső Juhász