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Albert Imre Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt ( Hungarian : nagyrápolti Szent-Györgyi Albert Imre ; September 16, 1893 – October 22, 1986) was a Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937. He is credited with first isolating vitamin C and discovering many of the components and reactions of the citric acid cycle and the molecular basis of muscle contraction . He was also active in the Hungarian Resistance during World War II , and entered Hungarian politics after the war.

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129-452: Slovakization or Slovakisation ( Slovak : Slovakizácia , Hungarian : Szlovákosítás ) is a form of either forced or voluntary cultural assimilation and acculturation , during which non-Slovak nationals give up their culture and language in favor of the Slovak one. This process has relied most heavily on intimidation and harassment by state authorities. Another method of Slovakization

258-446: A "rhythmic law" which forbids two long vowels from following one another within the same word. In such cases the second vowel is shortened. For example, adding the locative plural ending -ách to the root vín- creates vínach , not * vínách . This law also applies to diphthongs; for example, the adjective meaning "white" is biely , not * bielý (compare Czech bílý ). Slovak has final devoicing ; when

387-611: A naturalized citizen of the United States. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1956. In 1941, Szent-Györgyi developed a research interest in cancer and developed ideas on applying the theories of quantum mechanics to the biochemistry ( quantum biology ) of cancer. The death of Rath, who had acted as the financial administrator of the Institute for Muscle Research, left Szent-Györgyi in

516-585: A 3-fold decrease in the percentage of Hungarians. The first Slovak census in 1919 in what is now Slovakia recorded 689,565 Hungarians constituting 23.59% of the population. According to the first Czechoslovak census in 1921 there were 650,597 Hungarians in Slovakia, constituting 21.68% of the population. The Czechoslovak census of 1930 recorded 571,952 Hungarians. All censuses from the period are disputed, and some give conflicting data for example in Kosice according to

645-498: A Hungarian minority party has always been a member of the parliament . As of 2012, a Hungarian minority party spent 10 out of 19 years in government. These parties are fighting for minority rights in Slovakia, such as the right to dual citizenship , which is granted by Hungary but not by the Slovak state, who have passed a law expecting others states to let Slovaks living abroad to retain their Slovak citizenship. Under Communism,

774-541: A Roman Catholic, was a daughter of József Lenhossék and Anna Bossányi. Jozefina was a sister of Mihály Lenhossék ; both of these men were Professors of Anatomy at the Eötvös Loránd University . His family included three generations of scientists. Music was important in the Lenhossék family. His mother Jozefina prepared to become an opera singer and auditioned for Gustav Mahler, then a conductor at

903-545: A demonstration organized by the Council of Workers. The demonstration went out of control and after a physical attack on the Italian commander Riccardo Barreca , a military patrol dispersed the crowd by shooting, leaving 7 dead and 23 wounded. Another aspect of the anti-Hungarian sentiment was the hatred of all the statues and monuments representing Austria-Hungary or Hungarian historical people. National socialist MPs of

1032-575: A few government employees speak Slovak here and there. What happened to the re-Slovakized persons?" With the disappearance of Edvard Beneš from the political scene, the Czechoslovak government issued decree No. 76/1948 on April 13, 1948, allowing those Hungarians still living in Czechoslovakia, to reinstate Czechoslovak citizenship. A year later, Hungarians were allowed to send their children to Hungarian schools, which had been reopened for

1161-536: A financial mess. He refused to write government grant proposals minutely specifiying his research methods and expected results. After Szent-Györgyi commented on his financial hardships in a 1971 newspaper interview, attorney Franklin Salisbury helped him establish a private nonprofit organization, the National Foundation for Cancer Research . Late in life, Szent-Györgyi began to pursue free radicals as

1290-663: A fugitive from the Gestapo . After the war, Szent-Györgyi had become well-recognized as a public figure and there was some speculation that he might become President of Hungary, should the Soviets permit it. Szent-Györgyi established a laboratory at the University of Budapest and became head of the biochemistry department there. He was elected a member of Parliament and helped re-establish the Academy of Sciences. Dissatisfied with

1419-468: A position at the University of Szeged in Hungary in 1930. There Szent-Györgyi and his research fellow Joseph Svirbely found that "hexuronic acid" was actually the long-sought antiscorbutic factor, henceforth known as vitamin C . After Walter Norman Haworth had determined its structure, the antiscorbutic was given the formal chemical name of L-ascorbic acid . In some experiments they used paprika as

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1548-478: A potential cause of cancer. He came to see cancer as being ultimately an electronic problem at the molecular level. In 1974, reflecting his interests in quantum physics, he proposed the term " syntropy " to replace " negentropy ". Ralph Moss, a protégé during his cancer research years, wrote a biography, Free Radical: Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and the Battle over Vitamin C. Aspects of his work are an important precursor to

1677-681: A significant number of Rusyns from Prešov, mainly to the Czech lands. The Slovak pressure on Rusyns in Slovakia increased after 1919 when Czechoslovakia incorporated Transcarpathia to the east of the Uzh River . The Slovakization of Rusyns (and Ukrainians) was a part of the program of the Slovak People's Party , whose leader refused to cooperate with the Rusyn politicians of Transcarpathia but cooperated with Hungarian-speaking A. Brody. Therefore,

1806-496: A statue of Ferenc Rákóczi in Brezno and numerous others. In almost all of these cases the perpetrators were soldiers of the Czechoslovak legion. The idleness of state authorities encouraged destroyers of statues. The government started to act only when the mob had begun to take over shops and properties of German entrepreneurs. Thereafter, Czechoslovak army and police intervened and destruction of symbols of monarchy stopped for nearly

1935-531: A subordinate role in self government." After the regions became autonomous in 2002, SMK was able to take power in the Nitra Region and it became part of the ruling coalition in several other regions. Before the Slovak independence two main issues appeared regarding language: the right to use non-Slovakized versions of women's names and the use of bilingual street signs. Non Slovaks were forced to Slovakize female personal names in official documents by attaching

2064-473: A transitional group that was connected with the Rusyns through religion and traditions, with Slovak as their language. Their number was gradually increasing with the transition of the parts of Rusyn population to the Slovak language. Slovakization of the Rusyn population increased in the times of the Czechoslovak authorities (since 1920). The Greek Catholics and Orthodox started to perceive themselves as Slovaks. It

2193-511: A very long slice of southern Slovakia, with the explicit aim to create an administrative unit with ethnic-Hungarian majority. Hungarian minority politicians and intellectuals thought that such kind of administrative unit is essential for the long-term survival of the Hungarian minority. Both proposals were rejected by the Slovak government in favour of an eight county model of north-south (and not east-west) governance, which has been seen to weaken

2322-415: A voiced consonant ( b, d, ď, g, dz, dž, z, ž, h ) is at the end of a word before a pause, it is devoiced to its voiceless counterpart ( p, t, ť, k, c, č, s, š, ch , respectively). For example, pohyb is pronounced /pɔɦip/ and prípad is pronounced /priːpat/ . Consonant clusters containing both voiced and voiceless elements are entirely voiced if the last consonant is a voiced one, or voiceless if

2451-500: A year. In the revolutionary period between the creation of Czechoslovakia and the first free parliamentary elections in 1920, legislative power was held by temporary, the revolutionary (un-elected) Czechoslovak National Council (later The Czechoslovak National Assembly ). The revolutionary parliament without participation of minorities also adopted a new constitution. The constitution guaranteed equal rights for all citizens regardless of gender, nationality or religion. In comparison with

2580-493: Is /x/ . Slovak uses the Latin script with small modifications that include the four diacritics ( ˇ, ´, ¨, ˆ ) placed above certain letters ( a-á,ä; c-č; d-ď; dz-dž; e-é; i-í; l-ľ,ĺ; n-ň; o-ó,ô; r-ŕ; s-š; t-ť; u-ú; y-ý; z-ž ) Italic letters are used in loanwords and foreign names. The primary principle of Slovak spelling is the phonemic principle. The secondary principle is the morphological principle: forms derived from

2709-574: Is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group , written in Latin script . It is part of the Indo-European language family , and is one of the Slavic languages , which are part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch . Spoken by approximately 5 million people as a native language, primarily ethnic Slovaks , it serves as the official language of Slovakia and one of the 24 official languages of

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2838-410: Is associated with one or more grammatical cases. The noun governed by a preposition must agree with the preposition in the given context. The preposition od always calls for the genitive case, but some prepositions such as po can call for different cases depending on the intended sense of the preposition. Slovak is a descendant of Proto-Slavic , itself a descendant of Proto-Indo-European . It

2967-620: Is closely related to the other West Slavic languages , primarily to Czech and Polish . Czech also influenced the language in its later development. The highest number of borrowings in the old Slovak vocabulary come from Latin , German , Czech, Hungarian , Polish and Greek (in that order). Recently, it is also influenced by English. Although most dialects of Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible (see Comparison of Slovak and Czech ), eastern Slovak dialects are less intelligible to speakers of Czech and closer to Polish and East Slavic , and contact between speakers of Czech and speakers of

3096-512: Is complex and volatile. A long-term cultural and everyday cohabitation of Rusyns , Slovaks and Hungarians , under the prepodence of the non-Rusyn element led to the linguistic Slovakization of Rusyns, while in some parts (in cities and ethnic islands in the south) they were Magyarized. Still, in both cases they preserved their religion ( Greek Catholicism ). Until the 1920s, the Slovak-speaking Greek-Catholics composed

3225-463: Is currently undergoing changes due to contact with surrounding languages (Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, and Hungarian) and long-time geographical separation from Slovakia (see the studies in Zborník Spolku vojvodinských slovakistov , e.g. Dudok, 1993). The dialect groups differ mostly in phonology, vocabulary, and tonal inflection. Syntactic differences are minor. Central Slovak forms the basis of

3354-688: Is defined by an Act of Parliament on the State Language of the Slovak Republic (language law). According to this law, the Ministry of Culture approves and publishes the codified form of Slovak based on the judgment of specialised Slovak linguistic institutes and specialists in the area of the state language. This is traditionally the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of Linguistics , which is part of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. In practice,

3483-528: Is difficult to estimate the distribution of the Orthodox and the Greek Catholics by the language as well as to determine the number of Rusyns because both the Hungarian and Czechoslovak censuses provided the incorrect number of Rusyns, but it contains roughly 50–100 000 people. According to censuses the decrease of the number of Rusyns was influenced not only by Slovakization but also by emigration of

3612-453: Is insufficient political will to legislate the provisions as laws. This happened between 1992 and 1998 (i.e. under Mečiar's government). Slovak nationalist demands for a language law detaining the use of Hungarian in public institutions already appeared in 1990. Finally, the Meciar government pushed through legislation restricting the use of minority languages in public institutions. In 1995,

3741-483: Is most often used in relation to Hungarians , who constitute the most prominent minority of Slovakia, but it also affects Germans , Poles , Ukrainians , Rusyns (Ruthenians), and Jews, and Romani . Robert Fico 's governance often violates minority rights and is openly hungarophobic for its disrespect of the Hungarian minority, and Fico himself in 1998 lobbied for the Party of Hungarian Coalition to not be let into

3870-719: Is present when, for example, the basic singular form and plural form of masculine adjectives are written differently with no difference in pronunciation (e.g. pekný = nice – singular versus pekní = nice – plural). Such spellings are most often remnants of differences in pronunciation that were present in Proto-Slavic (in Polish, where the vowel merger did not occur, piękny and piękni and in Czech pěkný and pěkní are pronounced differently). Most loanwords from foreign languages are respelt using Slovak principles either immediately or later. For example, "weekend"

3999-438: Is spelled víkend , "software" – softvér , "gay" – gej (both not exclusively) , and "quality" is spelled kvalita . Personal and geographical names from other languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling unless a fully Slovak form of the name exists (e.g. Londýn for " London "). Slovak features some heterophonic homographs (words with identical spelling but different pronunciation and meaning),

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4128-594: Is the plural genitive (e.g. päť domov = five houses or stodva žien = one hundred two women), while the plural form of the noun when counting the amounts of 2–4, etc., is usually the nominative form without counting (e.g. dva domy = two houses or dve ženy = two women) but gender rules do apply in many cases. Verbs have three major conjugations. Three persons and two numbers (singular and plural) are distinguished. Subject personal pronouns are omitted unless they are emphatic. Several conjugation paradigms exist as follows: Adverbs are formed by replacing

4257-626: Is used to create numerals 20, 30 and 40; for numerals 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90, desiat is used. Compound numerals (21, 1054) are combinations of these words formed in the same order as their mathematical symbol is written (e.g. 21 = dvadsaťjeden , literally "twenty-one"). The numerals are as follows: Some higher numbers: (200) dv e sto , (300) tristo , (900) deväťsto , (1,000) tisíc , (1,100) tisícsto , (2,000) dv e tisíc , (100,000) stotisíc , (200,000) dv e stotisíc , (1,000,000) milión , (1,000,000,000) miliarda . Counted nouns have two forms. The most common form

4386-627: The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (ratified by Slovakia in 1995) or the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ratified by Slovakia in 2001) and the 1995 Treaty on Good Neighbourly Relations and Friendly Cooperations between Slovakia and Hungary protect the language rights of minorities. Article 34. of the 1992 constitution asserts that "citizens of ethnic minorities have

4515-601: The Budapest Opera . He advised her to marry instead, since her voice was not enough. Albert himself was good at the piano, while his brother Pál became a professional violinist. Szent-Györgyi began his studies at the Semmelweis University in 1911, and then began research in his uncle's anatomy lab. His studies were interrupted in 1914 to serve as an army medic in World War I. In 1916, disgusted with

4644-463: The Communist rule of Hungary, he emigrated to the United States in 1947. In 1967, Szent-Györgyi signed a letter declaring his intention to refuse to pay taxes as a means of protesting against the U.S. war against Vietnam, and urging other people to take a similar stand. He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution . As a result, for

4773-714: The Slovak Parliament passed Act No 270 on the State Language of Slovakia, which came into power on 1 January 1996. This act revoked the more tolerant Act No 428 passed in 1990. The 1995 act emphasized the significance of the Slovak language for Slovak nationalism and statehood, by consolidating the exclusivist monolingualism . The new act considerably limited the use of minority languages, that is, of Hungarian, which had featured on bilingual signposts with placenames in predominantly Hungarian areas, and in bilingual school certificates issued to students in Hungarian minority schools. According to Duray: "An official language law

4902-509: The United Kingdom , Australia , Austria , Ukraine , Norway , and other countries to a lesser extent. Slovak language is one of the official languages of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina . There are many Slovak dialects, which are divided into the following four basic groups: The fourth group of dialects is often not considered a separate group, but a subgroup of Central and Western Slovak dialects (see e.g. Štolc, 1968), but it

5031-704: The high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later mid-19th century, the modern Slovak alphabet and written standard became codified by Ľudovít Štúr and reformed by Martin Hattala . The Moravian dialects spoken in the western part of the country along the border with the Czech Republic are also sometimes classified as Slovak, although some of their western variants are closer to Czech; they nonetheless form

5160-483: The pension , social , and healthcare system . 400,000 (sources differ) stateless Hungarians applied for, and eventually 344,609 Hungarians received a re-Slovakization certificate by the Central Committee for Reslovakization, and thereby Czechoslovak citizenship. Therefore, the number of Hungarians in Slovakia dropped to 350,000. According to Soviet archives, 20,000 Hungarians declared themselves as Slovak at

5289-554: The "reslovakized" Hungarians did not take the forcible change of ethnicity seriously, because it is impossible to force someone to forget his culture and language suddenly. A Slovak journalist wrote the following about the "reslovakized" city of Nové Zámky ( Hungarian : Érsekújvár ): „80% of the Hungarian population of Nové Zamky re-Slovakized . . . On the other hand, the fact remains that one can barely hear Slovak spoken in Nové Zámky. You will never find these 80% Slovaks. Only

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5418-471: The 1910s. Czechoslovakia provided a large education network for the Hungarian minority. Hungarians, for example, had 31 kindergartens, 806 elementary schools, 46 secondary schools, 576 Hungarian libraries at schools in the 1930s and a Department of Hungarian literature was created at the Charles University of Prague . The number of Hungarian elementary schools increased from 720 in 1923/1924 to

5547-519: The 25-year-old daughter of Woods Hole biologist Ralph Wichterman, in 1965. They were divorced in 1968. He married his fourth wife, Marcia Houston, in 1975. They adopted a daughter, Lola von Szent-Györgyi. Szent-Györgyi died in Woods Hole, Massachusetts , US, on October 22, 1986. He was honored with a Google Doodle September 16, 2011, 118 years after his birth. In 2004, nine interviews were conducted with family, colleagues, and others to create

5676-621: The Czech language fulfills the requirement of fundamental intelligibility with the state language"; the state language is Slovak and the Minority Language Act basically refers to municipalities with more than 20% ethnic minority population (no such Czech municipalities are found in Slovakia). Since 1 September 2009 (due to an amendment to the State Language Act 270/1995 Z.z.) a language "fundamentally intelligible with

5805-590: The Czechoslovak National Assembly called for the conservation of such works of art, moving and preserving them in suitable places as early as 1920. The hatred however was not limited to sculptures only: Hungarian books were burned in Poprad and possibly other locations as well. Concurrently some of the statues were destroyed as well: the millennium monument along with the Árpád statue in Devín

5934-1029: The Czechoslovak censuses 15–20% of the population was Hungarian. However, during the parliamentary elections the Ethnic Hungarian parties got 35–45% of the total votes (excluding those Hungarians who voted for the Communists or the Social democrats). The whole matter is complicated by the fact that there was a high percentage of bilingual and similarly "Slovak-Hungarian" persons who could claim being both Slovak and Hungarian. Slovak sources usually do not deny that many Hungarian teachers (replaced in Slovak schools by Slovak and Czech teachers), railwaymen (on strike against new Czechoslovak republic in February 1919), postmen, policemen, soldiers and civil clerks (replaced by Czech and Slovak soldiers, policemen and clerks) were forced to leave or left for Hungary voluntarily,

6063-653: The Dionysian rather relies on intuition and is more likely to open new, unexpected alleys for research...The future of mankind depends on the progress of science, and the progress of science depends on the support it can find. Support mostly takes the form of grants, and the present methods of distributing grants unduly favor the Apollonian." As the government of Gyula Gömbös and the associated Hungarian National Defence Association gained control of politics in Hungary, Szent-Györgyi helped his Jewish friends escape from

6192-564: The European Union . Slovak is closely related to Czech , to the point of very high mutual intelligibility , as well as Polish . Like other Slavic languages, Slovak is a fusional language with a complex system of morphology and relatively flexible word order . Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German , as well as other Slavic languages . The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in

6321-744: The Hungarian Communist government. In 1948, he received a research position with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland and began dividing his time between there and Woods Hole. In 1950, grants from the Armour Meat Company and the American Heart Association allowed him to establish the Institute for Muscle Research at Woods Hole. Szent-Györgyi conducted research at

6450-565: The Hungarian community exceeds 40% of the total population the teachers of Slovak schools receive supplementary pay. In all communities which include a Hungarians population and where there is no school or there is no Slovak school, wherever possible a Slovak school should be opened, but not a Hungarian one." At the end of the 1998 school year a large number of Hungarian pupils handed back their school report that were issued only in Slovak. In 2003, there were 295 Hungarian elementary schools and 75 secondary schools in Slovakia. In most of them Hungarian

6579-600: The Hungarian minority in Slovakia gained momentum with the formation of the Slovak state in 1993, increasing even more sharply since Vladimír Mečiar came to power for the third time in December of 1994." — Miklós Duray , politician Party of the Hungarian Coalition Under the premiership of Mečiar prone to populism , exclusivist Slovak nationalism , and the use of extralegal measures, independent Slovakia approached authoritarianism. Mečiar turned

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6708-473: The Hungarian minority into a scapegoat for Slovakia's bad economic situation. Numerous articles and books containing anti-Hungarian propaganda appeared, and the Hungarians were accused for the destruction of the ' first Slovak state ', and for the ‘one-millennium-long oppression’ of Slovak nation. During the redrawing of the administrative boundaries of Slovakia, Hungarian politicians suggested two models;

6837-406: The Hungarian minority issue was confined invariably to the position of Slovaks within the Czechoslovak state, and therefore it was ignored in any systematic way. But the fall of Communism reinforced national identities and demolished the ideology of 'the socialist unity of nations'. The break-up of Czechoslovakia was a process of national redefinition and assertion in Slovakia. "The oppression of

6966-542: The Hungarian politicians for pushing "revanchist" policies which could destabilize Europe. Later on the Hungarian members of the Slovak parliament requested for compensation and for a symbolic apology to the victims of the expulsions. As an answer, the Slovak government adopted a resolution in September 2007 which declared that the Beneš decrees are inalterable. Czechoslovakia (being a Socialist country at that time) financed

7095-452: The Hungarian schools of Slovakia. According to a new education law plan, the Hungarian language which was educated as mother tongue until now will be considered a foreign language – and taught in a smaller proportion of lessons. The only textbooks allowed to be used in Hungarian schools will be those translated from Slovak books and approved by Slovak administration. In October 2008 Hungarian parents and teachers sent back Hungarian textbooks to

7224-556: The Languages of the Minority Communities , which reintroduced the institution of bilingual school certificates and provided that in communes with more than 20 percent of inhabitants belonging to a given minority, the minority language can be used in administration, and signposts with placenames can be bilingual. Furthermore, Article 10, prohibiting doing business and drafting contracts in any other language but Slovak,

7353-510: The MBL from 1947 to 1986 year-round. There, he found that whole muscle tissue retained its contractility almost indefinitely if stored cold in a fifty percent glycerol solution, thus eliminating the need to have fresh muscle on hand. During the 1950s Szent-Györgyi began using electron microscopes to study muscles at the subunit level. He received the Lasker Award in 1954. In 1955, he became

7482-642: The Minister of Education. The books contained geographical names only in Slovak violating the basic rules of the Hungarian language and the minorities' right of usage of their native language. In November 2008 Prime Minister Robert Fico has again promised, this time at a cabinet meeting in Komárno, southern Slovakia, that an ongoing problem with textbooks for ethnic Hungarian schools in Slovakia will be resolved. Though as of November 2008 Ján Slota still insists on

7611-555: The Ministry of Culture publishes a document that specifies authoritative reference books for standard Slovak usage, which is called the codification handbook ( kodifikačná príručka ). The current regulations were published on 15 March 2021. There are four such publications: Slovak speakers are also found in the Slovak diaspora in the United States , the Czech Republic , Argentina , Serbia , Ireland , Romania , Poland , Canada , Hungary , Germany , Croatia , Israel ,

7740-517: The Rusyn politicians opened the links with the Czech political parties which were supportive of neutrality towards the Rusyn question. The cultural Slovak-Rusyn relations at the time were minimal. Slovak language [REDACTED]   Croatia Slovak ( / ˈ s l oʊ v æ k , - v ɑː k / SLOH -va(h)k ; endonym : slovenčina [ˈslɔʋent͡ʂina] or slovenský jazyk [ˈslɔʋenskiː ˈjazik] ),

7869-431: The Slovak Republic. (2) The use of languages other than the official language in official communication shall be laid down by law. Constitution of Slovakia , Article 6. Beside that, national minorities and ethnic groups also have explicit permission to use their distinct languages. Slovakia is a country with established Language policy concerning its official language . Standard Slovak ( spisovná slovenčina )

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7998-628: The Slovak feminine suffix '-ová'. Members of ethnic minorities were restricted in their choice of given names, as registry offices accepted only names from a limited list only. After ten years wrangling, the second Dzurinda cabinet eased these restrictions. The Slovak Constitution from 1992 asserts that the ‘ state language ’ on the territory of the Slovak Republic is Slovak . At the same time this constitution entails explicit provisions for minorities , including language right. These provisions were reinforced in 2001. International treaties like

8127-437: The Slovak public discourse reached its top in the 2010 parliamentary elections, when numerous parties have been campaigning with latent to openly anti-Hungarian slogans. The presently governing Smer has rented billboards that have warned that "They have given power to SMK! They will do it again!", alleging that forming a coalition with SMK would be dangerous. SNS went even further and published openly anti-Hungarian posters (see

8256-475: The Slovak-Hungarian language border. Consequently, fully Hungarian-populated areas were annexed to the newly created state. The ethnic border has been sliding downward since the second part of the 19th century, with the beginning of the Slovak nationalist aspirations , and many almost exclusively Hungarian settlements, such as Pusztafödémes (now: Pusté Úľany) became completely Slovakised by the end of

8385-541: The Slovakian parliament, and stated that the Beneš decrees (promoted the violation of human rights and racial discrimination of Hungarian and German population) was unchangeable. By keeping the laws the Slovak government could make millions of euros in profit in a few years. The process of slovakization was present in the Kingdom of Hungary presumably ever since the appearance of the Slovak nation itself, but up until

8514-516: The Undersecretary of Education sent a circular to the heads of the school districts making known the following regulations: In Hungarian schools the Slovak language should be taught exclusively by native speakers. The same exclusion criteria applies to non-Slovak schools in the teaching of geography and history. (The Undersecretary modified the language of this regulation later by changing the term "exclusively" for "mainly".) In communities where

8643-555: The above number 806. The Hungarian University in Bratislava/Pozsony was immediately closed after formation of Czechoslovakia According to the 1910 census conducted by the Central Statistical Office of Hungary, there were 884,309 people with Hungarian as a mother tongue, constituting 30.2% of the population, in what is now Slovakia compared to the 9.7% number recorded in the 2001 census, amounting to

8772-399: The adjectival ending with the ending - o or - e / - y . Sometimes both - o and - e are possible. Examples include the following: The comparative of adverbs is formed by replacing the adjectival ending with a comparative/superlative ending - (ej)ší or - (ej)šie , whence the superlative is formed with the prefix naj-. Examples include the following: Each preposition

8901-501: The array of subjects that should be taught in each language remained a highly contested issue. Government proposals prior to the 1998 elections (i.e. under Mečiar's government) even suggested that certain subjects should be taught only by teachers of 'Slovak origin' to ensure that the Slovak population living in areas with significant Hungarian populations should be able to assimilate themselves into mainstream Slovak life. According to Duray: "On March 12, 1997 (i.e. under Mečiar's government),

9030-402: The basis of the lowland dialects (see above). The western dialects contain features common with the Moravian dialects in the Czech Republic, the southern central dialects contain a few features common with South Slavic languages, and the eastern dialects a few features common with Polish and the East Slavonic languages (cf. Štolc, 1994). Lowland dialects share some words and areal features with

9159-435: The beginning of the year 1949, and eventually 360,000 Hungarians changed their ethnicity to Slovak, according to Slovak historians. The fear was so big among the Hungarian population, that only 350,000–367,000 claimed themselves Hungarian in the 1950 census, and only after ten years -when the reslovakization program was revoked- began to rose and reached 518,000. The official results of re-slovakization action were summarized in

9288-606: The biological combustion process with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid ". Albert Szent-Györgyi offered all of his Nobel prize money to Finland in 1940. ( Hungarian volunteers in the Winter War travelled to fight for the Finns after the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939.) In 1938 he began work on the biophysics of muscle movement. He found that muscles contain actin , which when combined with

9417-410: The bridge dialects between the two languages. Slovak language is primarily spoken in Slovakia. The country's constitution declared it the official language of the state (štátny jazyk): (1) Na území Slovenskej republiky je štátnym jazykom slovenský jazyk. (2) Používanie iných jazykov než štátneho jazyka v úradnom styku ustanoví zákon. (1) The Slovak language is the official language on the territory of

9546-523: The centuries of Hungarian rule. As Anton Granatier, officer of the Resettlement Bureau said: „We want to be the national state of Slovaks and Czechs, and we will be. This monumental programme includes re−slovakization, already under way in whole Slovakia! Within the scope of this action everyone who feels to be Slovak by origin will have the chance to declare it freely whether they want to become Slovaks with all its consequences or want to share

9675-580: The country. During World War II, he joined the Hungarian resistance movement . Although Hungary was allied with the Axis Powers , the Hungarian prime minister Miklós Kállay sent Szent-Györgyi to Istanbul in 1944 under the guise of a scientific lecture to begin secret negotiations with the Allies . The Germans learned of this plot and Adolf Hitler himself issued a warrant for the arrest of Szent-Györgyi. He escaped from house arrest and spent 1944 to 1945 as

9804-506: The defeat of the remaining Hungarian armies in 1919, which laid foundations to the creation of Czechoslovakia, a state in which the Slovaks had gained a de facto political power for the first time in the nation's history. The Paris Peace Conference concluded by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 set the southern border of Czechoslovakia for strategic and economic reasons much further south than

9933-472: The early summer for worsening ethnic relations. (Further informations: 2006 Slovak-Hungarian diplomatic affairs , and Hedvig Malina ). On 27 September 2007 the Beneš decrees were reconfirmed by the Slovak parliament which legitimized the Hungarians and Germans calumniation and deportation from Czechoslovakia after World War II . In 2008, Ján Mikolaj (SNS), minister of education propagated changes in

10062-456: The eastern dialects is limited. Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia it has been permitted to use Czech in TV broadcasting and during court proceedings (Administration Procedure Act 99/1963 Zb.). From 1999 to August 2009, the Minority Language Act 184/1999 Z.z., in its section (§) 6, contained the variously interpreted unclear provision saying that "When applying this act, it holds that the use of

10191-570: The electoral power of Hungarians. According to Miklós Duray , a politician of the Party of the Hungarian Coalition : "Administrative jurisdictions of Slovakia were geographically modified in a clear case of gerrymandering . The administrative system governed by laws created in 1991, included 17 primary jurisdictions and 2 secondary jurisdictions, with a majority Hungarian population. The 1996 law eliminated this system of administration. In

10320-493: The fate of those without citizenship.“ In the spring and summer of 1945, a series of decrees stripped Hungarians of property, from all civil rights and from their citizenship. Hungary itself gave the Slovaks equal rights and demanded the same solution to the issue from Czechoslovakia. Since Hungarians in Slovakia were deprived of many rights, and were the target of discrimination, they were pressured into having their ethnicity officially changed to Slovak, otherwise they dropped out of

10449-512: The final report of the Re-slovakization Commission. The commission received 197,916 application forms related to 449,914 people. 83,739 applicants declared Slovak nationality also before 1930 and they were not considered to be re-slovakizants. From the remaining 366,175 candidates, the commission accepted 284,814 and refused 81,361 candidates for various reasons. An important issue with the slovakization procedure was, that

10578-607: The first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt a Constitution for the Federation of Earth . He married Cornelia Demény (1898–1981), daughter of the Hungarian Postmaster-General, in 1917. Their daughter, Cornelia Szent-Györgyi, was born in 1918 and died in 1969. He and Cornelia divorced in 1941. In 1941, he wed Marta Borbiro Miskolczy. She died of cancer in 1963. Szent-Györgyi married June Susan Wichterman,

10707-415: The first time since 1945, although Hungarians remaining in Slovakia were subjected to extremely heavy pressure to assimilate, and complaints reached Moscow about forced enrollment of Hungarian children in Slovak schools. Most Slovakized Hungarians gradually readopted their Hungarian ethnicity. As a result, "The Re-Slovakization Commission" ceased operations in December 1948. Despite their promises to settle

10836-552: The following purely Hungarian institutions for the Hungarians in Czechoslovakia as of early 1989: 386 kindergartens, 131 elementary schools, 98 secondary schools, 2 theaters, 1 special Hungarian language publishing house (6 publishing houses also publishing Hungarian literature) and 24 newspapers and journals. The first Hungarian-language university in Slovakia was opened only in 2004 – the Selye János University . According to The Minorities at Risk Project : During

10965-550: The foundation of Czechoslovakia the process was entirely voluntary. This early form of slovakization can be observed in detail in noble families' personal correspondence. Another example of pre-World War I Slovakization is the assimilation of the Habans, a Hutterite group settled in the Nagylévárd (today's Veľké Leváre) area in the 16th century, into the Slovak majority. The accelerated, forced nature of slovakization began with

11094-422: The grammatically incorrect version (Slovak language names in Hungarian sentences) and having the correct Hungarian name only afterwards. The Slovak authorities denied the registration of a Hungarian traditional folk art association, because they used the Hungarian word Kárpát-medence ( Carpathian Basin ). According to Dušan Čaplovič the word and the association is against the sovereignty of Slovakia, furthermore

11223-615: The interpretation of Great Moravia as an "Old Slovak state", or the term " Old Slovak" itself, along with the "refreshing" of many "old traditions", that in fact did not exist or were not Slovak before. The concept received criticism in Slovakia pointing out that the term "Old Slovak" cannot be found in any serious publication, simply because it lacks any scientific basis. Miroslav Kusý , a Slovak political scientist, explained that by adopting such scientifically questionable rhetoric Fico aims to "strengthen national consciousness by falsification of history". The ethnic relationship of Prešov Region

11352-699: The issue of the Hungarians in Slovakia, in 1948 Czech and Slovak ruling circles still maintained the hope that they could deport the Hungarians from Slovakia. According to a 1948 poll conducted among the Slovak population 55% were for "resettlement" (deportation) of the Hungarians, 24% said "don't know", 21% were against. Under slogans for the struggle with class enemies, the process of dispersing dense Hungarian settlements continued in 1948 and 1949. By October 1949 preparations were made to deport 600 Hungarian families. Finally, on 25 July 1949, Czechoslovak and Hungarian delegations met in Štrbské pleso and signed so-called Štrba protocol ( Slovak : Štrbský protokol ) which ended

11481-422: The languages surrounding them (Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, and Romanian). Slovak contains 15 vowel phonemes (11 monophthongs and four diphthongs) and 29 consonants. The phoneme /æ/ is marginal and often merges with /e/; the two are normally only distinguished in higher registers. Vowel length is phonemic in Slovak and both short and long vowels have the same quality. In addition, Slovak, unlike Czech, employs

11610-419: The last consonant is voiceless. For example, otázka is pronounced /ɔtaːska/ and vzchopiť sa is pronounced /fsxɔpitsːa/ . This rule applies also over the word boundary. For example, prísť domov [priːzɟ dɔmɔw] (to come home) and viac jahôd [ʋɪɐdz jaɦʊɔt] (more strawberries). The voiced counterpart of " ch " /x/ is [ɣ] , and the unvoiced counterpart of " h " /ɦ/

11739-565: The law disputes between Hungarian and Czechoslovak property and legal question and compensation of deported Hungarians. In 2002 before Slovakia and Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 , Hungarian politician Viktor Orbán demanded the repeal of the Beneš decrees , but the European Parliament asserted that "the decrees did not constitute an insurmountable obstacle to accession." Slovak politician Monika Beňová-Flašiková accused

11868-429: The most common examples being krásne /ˈkraːsnɛ/ (beautiful) versus krásne /ˈkraːsɲɛ/ (beautifully). The main features of Slovak syntax are as follows: Some examples include the following: Word order in Slovak is relatively free, since strong inflection enables the identification of grammatical roles (subject, object, predicate, etc.) regardless of word placement. This relatively free word order allows

11997-504: The most significant exclusionary factor in Hungarians’ social situation under the socialist regime was most likely their own refusal to integrate into the Czechoslovak system and to learn the language. Without a fluency in the official language, their economic and political opportunities were severely limited. The Party of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK) and Most–Híd are the major Hungarian minority parties in Slovak politics. Since 1993

12126-450: The new country. Most of the professors and former students then left Pressburg for Budapest (with the university later being re-established in Pécs ). Zoch had previously stated "...but the question of minorities will be fully solved only after our public perception of morality will condemn ethnic oppression just as much as the oppression of religion". According to Varsik, the university

12255-512: The next few years, finally ending up at the University of Groningen , where his work focused on the chemistry of cellular respiration . This work landed him a position as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow at the University of Cambridge . He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1929 where he was a student at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge . His research involved isolating an organic acid , which he then called "hexuronic acid", from adrenal gland tissue. Szent-Györgyi accepted

12384-533: The noun in situations where definiteness must be made explicit. Slovak nouns are inflected for case and number . There are six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, and instrumental. The vocative is purely optional and most of the time unmarked. It is used mainly in spoken language and in some fixed expressions: mama mum (nominative) vs. mami mum! (vocative), tato , oco dad (N) vs. tati , oci dad! (V), pán Mr., sir vs. pane sir (when addressing someone e.g. in

12513-680: The numbers however are unclear but census do show a rapid decline in the number of people with Hungarian as a mother tongue. Some teachers and civil servants were expelled from Czechoslovakia while some left due to the harsh circumstances. There are many examples of Hungarians who were forced to leave their homes from this territory (two famous ones are the families of Béla Hamvas , and of Albert Szent-Györgyi ). The high number of refugees (and even more from Romania ) necessitated entire new housing projects in Budapest (Mária-Valéria telep, Pongrácz-telep), which gave shelter to refugees numbering at least in

12642-432: The other hand, Hungarians founded numerous parties including pro-Czechoslovak parties, founded parties with agrarian, social-democratic, Christian-socialist and other orientations, were active as sections of statewide Czechoslovak parties, had opportunities to participate in government and in the 1920s Hungarian members of parliament participated in adoption of several important laws with statewide impact. After World War II,

12771-582: The party is breaking into factions. One of the factions is headed by the Representative of the Soviet of Plenipotentiaries, G. Husák. This faction includes Clementis, Novomeský and in general the Slovak intelligentsia and students. It displays a sharply nationalistic, anti-Semitic , anti-Hungarian character. ... Anti-Semitism generally is widespread in the party" — A letter from Mátyás Rákosi to Joseph Stalin , dated 25, September 1948. In 1946

12900-563: The picture on the right) asserting that Slovakia's on the brim of being conquered by Hungary due to the new Hungarian government's actions. Posters by SNS have been prominently featured in areas with predominantly Hungarian populace too. Since deputy prime minister Robert Fico declared the "wise historism" concept, the history books are getting rewritten at a faster pace than before, and in an increased "spirit of national pride", which Krekovič, Mannová and Krekovičová claim are mainly nothing else, but history falsifications. Such new inventions are

13029-508: The population even in communication with government offices and courts. According to Béla Angyal , due to gerrymandering and disproportionate distribution of population between Bohemia and Slovakia the Hungarians had little representation in the National Assembly and thus their influence on the politics of Czechoslovakia remained limited. The same considerations limited the Slovak intelligentsia 's political power as well. On

13158-457: The present-day standard language. Not all dialects are fully mutually intelligible. It may be difficult for an inhabitant of the western Slovakia to understand a dialect from eastern Slovakia and the other way around. The dialects are fragmented geographically, separated by numerous mountain ranges. The first three groups already existed in the 10th century. All of them are spoken by the Slovaks outside Slovakia, and central and western dialects form

13287-449: The previous state in the Kingdom of Hungary it also extended political rights to individuals of Hungarian nationality, by introducing universal suffrage , removing voting criteria based on wealth and education (typical for previous Hungarian elections) and granted full women's suffrage (including for Hungarian women). Later on, all minorities gained the right to use their languages in municipalities where they constituted at least 20% of

13416-639: The process of "Reslovakization" (or re-Slovakization), the forced acceptance of Slovak ethnicity, was engaged by the Czechoslovak government with the objective of eliminating the Hungarian ethnicity. The Slovak Commissioner of the Interior on June 17, 1946 (decree No.20,000/1946) initiated the "Reslovakization" program. This process based upon the Czechoslovak assumption that in fact there never had been any Hungarians in South Slovakia, only "Hungarianized Slovaks" who lost their Slovak national identity through

13545-696: The protein myosin and the energy source ATP , contract muscle fibers. In 1946, Albert received the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh . In 1947 Szent-Györgyi established the Institute for Muscle Research at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MLB) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts with financial support from Hungarian businessman Stephen Rath. However, he still faced funding difficulties for several years due to his foreign status and former association with

13674-408: The reorganized system only 2 primary administrative jurisdictions have a Hungarian majority population ( Dunajská Streda and Komárno ). Furthermore, 8 secondary administrative jurisdictions were created, 5 with Hungarian populations in the 10 to 30 per cent range. In 1998, these jurisdictions had regional self governing communities, where the diminished proportion of Hungarians made certain they played

13803-411: The right to be educated in their language, the right to use it in dealings with authorities, and the right to participate in the solution of affairs concerning national minorities and ethnic groups". These provisions afford a high standard of protection, but still, these legislative instruments do not warrant the implementation of the postulated rights. In most cases the disfrancishement evolves when there

13932-414: The same stem are written in the same way even if they are pronounced differently. An example of this principle is the assimilation rule (see below). The tertiary principle is the etymological principle, which can be seen in the use of i after certain consonants and of y after other consonants, although both i and y are usually pronounced the same way. Finally, the rarely applied grammatical principle

14061-819: The size of Hungarian population was decreased by Czechoslovak-Hungarian population exchange and expulsion of Hungarians who came to after the First Vienna Award or committed crimes according to Decree of Slovak National Council No. 33/1945 Zb. about people tribunals. Due to the proclamation of the "Košice Government Program", the German and Hungarian population living in the reborn Czechoslovakia were subjected to various forms of persecution, including: expulsions, deportations, internments, peoples court procedures, citizenship revocations, property confiscation, condemnation to forced labour camps, and forced changes of ethnicity referred to as "reslovakization." "...in Slovakia,

14190-441: The so-called 'Komárno proposals'. The first proposal was a full ethnic autonomy of the southern Slovak districts with Hungarian majority, while the second suggestion was to create three counties in southern Slovakia to bring together the main centers of Hungarian population. Although a territorial unit of this name existed before 1918, the borders proposed by SMK were significantly different. The proposed region would have encompassed

14319-470: The socialist regime, Slovak nationalism was largely kept in check by the strongly centralist Prague regime. The 1968 switch to a federal arrangement gave greater scope to Slovak nationalism, however. New policies of assimilation included progressive Slovakization of education, elimination of Hungarian place-names from signs, bans on using Hungarian in administrative dealings and in institutions and workplaces, and pressure to Slovakize Hungarian names. Nonetheless,

14448-588: The source for their vitamin C. Also during this time, Szent-Györgyi continued his work on cellular respiration, identifying fumaric acid and other steps in what would become known as the Krebs cycle . In Szeged he also met Zoltán Bay , a physicist who became his friend and research partner in bio-physics. In 1937 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his discoveries in connection with

14577-483: The state language" (i.e. the Czech language) may be used in contact with state offices and bodies by its native speakers, and documents written in it and issued by bodies in the Czech Republic are officially accepted. Regardless of its official status, Czech is used commonly both in Slovak mass media and in daily communication by Czech natives as an equal language. Albert Szent-Gy%C3%B6rgyi Szent-Györgyi

14706-414: The street). There are two numbers: singular and plural. Nouns have inherent gender . There are three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives and pronouns must agree with nouns in case, number, and gender. The numerals 0–10 have unique forms, with numerals 1–4 requiring specific gendered representations. Numerals 11–19 are formed by adding násť to the end of each numeral. The suffix dsať

14835-569: The ten-thousands. Demographic change was also significant. Since the Middle Ages, Pusztaföldes, for example, had been almost exclusively Hungarian, but the Slovak expansion slowly replaced the aging population and out-numbering them. Under the Austro-Hungarian Empire there was strong anti-Hungarian sentiment among certain sections of the Czech and Slovak population and this persisted to some extent in Czechoslovakia once it

14964-534: The understanding of redox signaling . Albert Szent-Györgyi, who realized that "a discovery must be, by definition, at variance with existing knowledge," divided scientists into two categories: the Apollonians and the Dionysians . He called Dionysians the scientific dissenters who explore "the fringes of knowledge". He wrote, "In science the Apollonian tends to develop established lines to perfection, while

15093-406: The university did not even have a Slovak language department. In 1919, a new Czechoslovak university was founded in parallel and adopted space and limited inventory of unfinished faculty of medicine. Hungarian professors refused to promise loyalty to the new state, as was necessary for teachers and state employees, and were retired after being provided financial compensation. Thereafter, the university

15222-705: The use of word order to convey topic and emphasis . Some examples are as follows: The unmarked order is subject–verb–object . Variation in word order is generally possible, but word order is not completely free. In the above example, the noun phrase ten veľký muž cannot be split up, so that the following combinations are not possible: And the following sentence is stylistically infelicitous: The regular variants are as follows: Slovak, like every major Slavic language other than Bulgarian and Macedonian , does not have articles. The demonstrative pronoun in masculine form ten (that one) or tá in feminine and to in neuter respectively, may be used in front of

15351-584: The war, Szent-Györgyi shot himself in the arm, claimed to be wounded from enemy fire, and was sent home on medical leave. He was then able to finish his medical education and received his MD in 1917. He married Kornélia Demény , the daughter of the Hungarian Postmaster General, that same year. After the war, Szent-Györgyi began his research career in Pozsony (today Bratislava , Slovakia ). He switched universities several times over

15480-482: The word is fascist, it is familiar with the German Lebensraum , and Hungarians use it in this ideology. On September 1, 2009 more than ten thousand Hungarians held demonstrations to protest against the language law that limits the use of minority languages in Slovakia, in both countries. The law calls for fines of up to £4,380 for anyone "misusing the Slovak language. The particular anti-Hungarian edge of

15609-451: Was abolished from the Act. However the act limits itself to only official contacts with the state and thus fails to overcome the 1996 act ensuring the use of Slovak in culture, schools and media. Language rights in education have also been a sphere of antagonism between the Slovak state and the Hungarian minority. Bilingual education in primary and secondary schools is currently permitted. However,

15738-452: Was artificial resettlement. In the past the process has been greatly aided by deprivation of collective rights for minorities and ethnic cleansing , but in the last decades its promotion has been limited to the adoption of anti-minority policies and anti-minority hate speech . The process itself is limited mostly to Slovakia , where Slovaks constitute the absolute majority by means of population and legislation power as well. Slovakization

15867-708: Was blown up using dynamite,. The statue of Maria Theresa in Bratislava was preserved until October 1921 when information about attempts to restore monarchy spread in successor states of Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the atmosphere of partial mobilization, martial law and fresh memories to invasion by Béla Kun 's army, it was brought down using ropes tied to trucks. In Slovakia, memorials were destroyed mainly after intervention of Red Guards of Béla Kun in spring and summer 1919, when statues of Lajos Kossuth were destroyed in Rožňava , Lučenec , Dobšiná and Nové Zámky , as well as

15996-596: Was born in Budapest , Kingdom of Hungary , in 1893. His father, Miklós Szent-Györgyi, was a landowner, born in Marosvásárhely , Transylvania (today Târgu Mureş, Romania ), a Calvinist , and could trace his ancestry back to 1608 when Sámuel, a Calvinist predicant , was ennobled. At the time of Szent-Györgyi's birth, being of the nobility was considered important and created opportunities that otherwise were not available. (Miklós Szent-Györgyi's parents were Imre Szent-Györgyi and Mária Csiky). His mother, Jozefina,

16125-533: Was closed by official government decree and replaced by Comenius University which remained the only university in mid-war Slovakia for the majority population. On 3 February 1919, the day before the moving of Vavro Šrobár 's government to Bratislava, a strike began which affected key infrastructure and sectors of industry. The strike had initially social character. Thereafter, it was politicized and joined with national demands of Hungarian and German workers. On 12 February 1919, Hungarian nationalistic circles exploited

16254-401: Was formed. It seemed to hit the city of Pressburg (soon to be renamed Bratislava) most intensely. One of the first measures brought by Samuel Zoch , the newly appointed župan of the city was the forced disbandment of the only Hungarian university in Czechoslovakia ( Elisabeth Science University ), and the intimidation of its professors by the police in 1919, immediately after the formation of

16383-465: Was not closed by the župan because local politicians did not have such powers. Elisabeth University was founded in 1912 and began teaching only in 1914. The university was not the only Hungarian graduate school in the territory of contemporary Slovakia, but it had to serve to also all students from Upper Hungary inhabited by Slovak majority. However, in compliance with the education policy of the Hungarian government, which did not allow Slovak high schools,

16512-505: Was promulgated providing the legal framework for the official use of the Slovak language not only in official communications but also in everyday commerce, in the administration of religious bodies, and even in the realm of what is normally considered private interaction, for example, communications between patient and physician." In 1999, the Dzurinda government passed Act No 184 on the Use of

16641-477: Was used as the medium of instruction , excluding 35 elementary schools and 18 secondary schools, which were bilingual. After the parliamentary elections in 2006, the nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS) of Ján Slota became a member of the ruling coalition led by Robert Fico . In August a few incidents motivated by ethnic hatred caused diplomatic tensions between the countries. Mainstream Hungarian and Slovak media blamed Slota's anti-Hungarian statements from

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