TRAITS OF THE BÁCSKA REGION IN EDE MARGALITS’S EARLY COLLECTION OF PHRASEMES

Abstract

Ede Margalits’s Bácskai közmondások és szólásmódok (Proverbs and Idioms from Bácska) was published in Baja in 1877, and this publication was the forerunner of the author’s later monumental volumes of proverbs and idioms. This small, early collection indicates the professional and scholarly attitude of Margalits when focusing on the compilation of phrasemes. In the introduction the author presents the relevant principles of compiling and editing he is guided by, outlining at the same time the vision of a nation-wide collection. Unlike his practice in the later volumes, the idioms follow each other in strict alphabetic order in this early publication, and thus there are no key words in it. In this study, alongside presenting this volume of phrasemes from Bácska, we endeavour to highlight the distinctive local features of the idioms with regional attachment: such as dialectal phenomena, the occurrence of dialectal words, toponyms in idiomatic expressions, the presence of anecdotal phrasemes related to a place and the diversity of ethnic stereotypes. Margalits, just like János Erdélyi, also explains the less familiar phrasemes, and in the cases of the local ones tells of the event (real or alleged) which set off the phraseme, enriching thus with a great number of very valuable – local – anecdotes the local and cultural history of the region.