A trobriandi krikettől... - Magyar Elektronikus Könyvtár ...

This process will lead to the death of the traditional dialects. There are only very rare cases of
children learning the traditional dialect at home in the family as mother tongue. I came across
only four cases in Véménd and two in Csolnok, where children learn their grandparents’
mother tongue. The question is justified: „To whom will they talk to” is certainly justified.
Today, the restricted spheres of function of the Swabian dialect are continually decreasing.
The lack of pronunciation norms, and a codified and standard written form renders the
language unable to satisfy the increased needs of communication. The requirements of the
first generation could still be satisfied but in the life of newer generations the language has
proven to be insufficient. Among the members of the second and third generations Hungarian
is frequently the mother tongue, since they „speak it more” or „speak it better”, while
Swabian is reserved for parents, relatives or friends. I have met, however, Hungarian
Germans – first of all in the Baranya villages – who had not claimed their dialect as mother
tongue because of the of the census of 1941 (which was the basis for many Germans to have
to leave Hungary) but who used is as much as possible and on a higher standard than
Hungarian.
Among the villages the use of the traditional mother tongue is most vivid in Csolnok. There
was a coal mine for which the new socialist regime needed the labour of the Swabian
villagers, so they were allowed to stay in their homeland. The community was not broken up,
no new Hungarian settlers came, and the covertness of the village could be preserved to a
certain extent. This helped to preserve the Swabian dialect, but even in this village members
of the third generation do not want to use it at all.
3. „Hochdeutsch”
It appears necessary to discuss the experience of the interviewed Swabian villagers to the
standard or literary German. According to my researches 67% of the interviewed did not
speak standard German, but half of them understood it on the basis of the Swabian dialect.
Some members of the community, mostly of the second and third generation spoke
German; 430 having learnt it at school or worked in Germany. The eldest generation could not
learn German at school after the World War II. Those who went to school immediately before
the War, had learnt some literary German, but for most of them the only contact with the
language was through the Bible and prayer-book in German, since a literary Swabian did not
exist. Thus they learnt to pray either in German or in Hungarian. This meant that literary
German could not be developed as a substitute language. In every-day speech they mix
Swabian and Hungarian if necessary but not with standard German. German is outside of the
scope of diglossia. The absence of literary German was, however, a supporting factor in the
development of their Hungarian national identity and acceptance of Hungary as their
homeland.
Members of the second generation have already learnt German at school as a foreign language
and the best pupils became German language teachers. Today there are serious efforts to teach
German to children at the primary and secondary grammar schools, but the bilingual schools
have closed. Even Hungarian German parents think that the pupils were overburdened as they
had to learn geography, history, physics or biology both Hungarian and German.
430 After the Second World War it was forbidden to speak even the Swabian mother tongue and it was
impossible to learn German. Teaching the language has begun first in 1955, but the Germans did
not let their children to participate on the courses. They said they suffered so much because of their
mother tongue and did not want their children to experience the same fate.
461