What Can School Education Do to Preserve German Dialects in Hungary?

Abstract

The assimilation of the nationalities in Hungary is well advanced, and the process of language loss has reduced the use of the mother tongue to family and friends, while the tragic events following the Second World War almost entirely interrupted the transmission of the language. Today, the children of families of German nationality are socialised in Hungarian, which is the primary language of communication, so it is up to the public education institutions—kindergartens and schools—to ensure the acquisition of the German language, which primarily means the German standard language (Márkus & Gölcz, 2018, 56). However, the nationality curricula also emphasise the importance of children learning not only German but also their minority mother tongue, as this plays an important role in the development and strengthening of identity. This cannot be separated from the social tasks that are common to national education (Kozma, 2014, 12–13.). This paper describes the curricular arrangements for teaching the German dialect, the difficulties encountered in teaching it, the problems of its literacy and the advantages of knowing the dialect. The use of dialect literature in German classrooms is under-represented in school practice and teaching methodology, although tools are available to effectively teach dialect. This paper presents teaching materials and methods that teachers can use to introduce children to the mother tongue of their ancestors and to develop their dialect competence in the classroom.