Lake Balaton, in the Transdanubian region of Hungary, is the largest lake in Central Europe, and one of its foremost tourist destinations. As Hungary is landlocked, it is often affectionately called the "Hungarian Sea". The Zala River provides the largest inflow of water to the lake, and the canalized Sió is the only outflow.
In Hungarian, the lake is known as Balaton (nicknamed Balcsi). This name derives from the South-Slavic blato, mud (from ea...
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Lake Balaton, in the Transdanubian region of Hungary, is the largest lake in Central Europe, and one of its foremost tourist destinations. As Hungary is landlocked, it is often affectionately called the "Hungarian Sea". The Zala River provides the largest inflow of water to the lake, and the canalized Sió is the only outflow.
In Hungarian, the lake is known as Balaton (nicknamed Balcsi). This name derives from the South-Slavic blato, mud (from earlier Pan-Slavic boltьno), and has no meaning in Hungarian. The Romans called the lake Lacus Pelso ("Lake Pelso"). Pelso derives from a local name for the lake, perhaps from the Illyrian language, as the Illyrians once populated the region. Paleolinguists surmise that "Pelso" meant "shallow" in Illyrian; this deduction is based on a surmised Proto-Indo-European root *pels-, and on examples such as the German name Plattensee ("shallow sea"), a name given to the lake by the Germanic people in the area through the centuries.
Lake Balaton affects...
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