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THE LANGUAGE REFORM
89

opposition which he aroused. In some provinces, indeed, there was such strong opposition to his ideas that his works were burnt by the public hang­man. Hungarian autbors were now divided into two hostile camps. The "orthologists" thought that the language should remain as it was, both in quality and in quantity, while the "neologists" joined Kazinczy in his endeavour to increase its range by introducing new words and expressions.

Before Kazinczy died the Reform had triumphed, not in all points indeed, but as a principle, and practice quickly followed. Many new words created during this period of word-manufacture have since entirely dis­appeared, but the fact remains that some six or seven thousand words, rich in meaning, were permanently added to the language through the efforts of the refor­mers. How many words were lacking in which to express even the commonplace details of the life of a cultivated society, can easily be understood when we find that in speaking of the theatre, for instance, a Hungarian had no native words for "theatre," "actor," "curtain," "part," "character," and had to employ foreign ones.

Other languages, such as German and English, had the same difficulty, but they simply took over some Latin or Greek word, and as these remained uninflected, the foreign nature of the word was less apparent.

Another circumstance which added importance to the work of the reformers, was that even the already existing treasures of the language had not been systematically collected and arranged. There were no good dictionaries and no works on philology. The valuable material of the popular idiom was not easily available, and the reformers frequently wasted time in creating words through their