Host Community Information
About 90 percent of the Hungarian people are Magyars, descendants of the Finno-Ugric and Turkish tribes who mingled with Slavic tribes in the 9th century. The country's largest ethnic minorities are Roma, Germans, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, and Romanians.
Hungarian, also called Magyar, is the official language of Hungary. It has been influenced by a number of other languages, including Turkish, Slavic, German, Latin, and French. During the 15th century, Italian artists and scholars introduced the humanistic Renaissance into Hungarian culture. In the 16th century Hungarian replaced Latin.
Because of the country's large number of tourists and the minimal utility of Hungarian in other parts of the world, most Hungarians learn to speak foreign languages. German is the most popular foreign language spoken in Hungary. During parts of the Communist period (1948-1989), when Hungary was under the influence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Hungarians were restricted to learning Russian as an additional language. In the 1990s many young people in Hungary began learning English.
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