There are 1.25 million Hungarian native speakers in Romania, which represent 6.3% of the population. Most of them live in Transylvania, where there are two regions where they make up the majority of the inhabitants: Székely Land, a traditional region in the center of Romania, made up of Hargita (Harghita), Kovászna (Covasna) and parts of Maros (Mureș) County and Partium, in the Northwestern border region in Bihar (Bihor) and Szatmár (Satu Mare) Counties.

Most Hungarian native speakers (more than 97%) also identify themselves as ethnic Hungarian, meaning that language is an important boundary constructing element between the Romanian majority and the Hungarian minority. The Hungarian language skill of non-Hungarians is low, only a negligible proportion (around 1.5%) of the non-Hungarian population in Romania speaks or understand the language.

According to scholars around 1) 25% of Hungarians are monolingual Hungarians, who use almost only Hungarian in all domains, 2) 40-45% are unassimilated bilinguals, who use Hungarian in their private domain, but in official domains they use Romanian to some extent, 3) around 20% are assimilated bilinguals, who use both languages in their private domains and use almost exclusively Romanian in their official encounters and 4) around 10% are fully assimilated, who use Romanian regularly or exclusively in every domain of life. In their case language change seems imminent.

Hungarian children can learn in their mother tongue at all levels of public education from nursery to higher education, most of them choosing to study in monolingual Hungarian schools. Beyond learning in Hungarian language, all Hungarian young people learn the state language from kindergarten to the end of high school four hours a week.

There are around 200 municipalities where Hungarians live in a majority, in these areas Hungarian language is used in all domains of daily life. Despite this fact, Hungarian is not recognized as an official language in Romania, however according to the law Hungarian speakers can use their language in relationship with local authorities and public institutions, if their percentage is above 20% in the administrative unit.