The regional dialects still spoken in three border villages

In the village of Alsóőr — known in German as Unterwart — the weekly Mass is still conducted in Hungarian. This is unremarkable in Hungary. In Austria, where Alsóőr is located, it is remarkable enough to have attracted linguists, journalists and the occasional politician for the better part of a century.

The Hungarian-speaking community of Burgenland is one of the last remnants of a linguistic geography that the First World War dismantled and the Second confirmed. Its members are Austrian citizens who have been speaking Hungarian in this corner of Austria since before Austria existed as a state.

I spent three days in Alsóőr last spring, talking to people who have spent their lives navigating between languages. What struck me was not their exceptionalism — they are quick to resist that framing — but their ordinariness. They speak Hungarian at home because their parents spoke Hungarian at home. They speak German at work because Austria requires it. They switch between the two the way most people switch between registers: without thinking about it, because not thinking about it is how language works when it is truly alive.

A language dies when the last person who needs it stops needing it. We still need it.

The situation in Unterwart is better than in some comparable communities and worse than in others. There are roughly 200 regular Hungarian speakers left; the youngest are in their forties. The village school teaches Hungarian as a subject but no longer uses it as a medium of instruction. The church is the last institution where it is not optional.