Using the dominant language during heritage language class: Translanguaging at a Hungarian school in Cyprus
Heritage language schools are set up to provide space to maintain a community’s language and culture. This was the aim of the educators who founded the Hungarian School of Pafos. Using their experience from teaching in a diaspora context, the two founding teachers developed an approach that allows the dominant language to be used when teaching the heritage language.
Christmas 2025 celebration in The Hungarian School of Pafos.
The Hungarian School of Pafos was established in 2023 in Cyprus, through two educators’ collaboration. Kinga Photiou is a ballet dancer and teacher. Bernadett Jani-Demetriou is a teacher and a researcher. Their different professional backgrounds and teaching experiences complement each other. They formed a partnership in 2023, aiming to provide a space to experience “Hungarianness” for children with Hungarian connections and to bring the Hungarian people live in Cyprus closer to each other.
“Hungarianness” in Cyprus
Cyprus is a small island but culturally very diverse due to the fact that a growing number of migrants arrive to the island from all over the world. The Hungarian population has been steadily growing in the last decade, and the number of citizens with Hungarian origin is estimated to be around 2 to 3,000.
Pafos is the fourth largest city in Cyprus with a growing number of Hungarian expats. However, in recent years, Pafos has not had a locally rooted cultural initiative dedicated to bringing together the Hungarian community. Hungarians live scattered in the city and surrounding neighborhood without any unifying initiative.
Hungarian parents living in Cyprus have expressed the need for their children to learn about Hungarian culture and to practice the Hungarian language. This was the background of the establishment of the Hungarian heritage language school. The Hungarian School of Pafos now brings together children with Hungarian heritage from Pafos and surrounding areas.
The children share a common Hungarian background, yet, they form a heterogeneous group. Some of the children were born in Cyprus, and they come either from families with both parents being Hungarian or from mixed families. Others were born in Hungary and started their education in Hungary, then moved to the island in the recent years. In Cyprus, some of the children attend Greek public schools, others go to private international schools, with English as the language of instruction. There are also children who have not started school in Cyprus, they still study at Hungarian schools as homeschoolers. Teaching such a diverse group of children is not without challenges!
“We use their background knowledge connected to Cyprus, often in Greek and English as a scaffold for learning about the Hungarian culture and language.”
The initial experiences in teaching included challenges due to the fact that our pupils’ background is highly diverse and heterogenic. These challenges helped us realize that besides the pupils’ Hungarian heritage, the Cypriot context also contributes to who they are and how they see the world. Teaching them at the Hungarian School of Pafos made us realize that we could not ignore the fact that they are of Hungarian origin but living in Cyprus.
Witnessing instances in the teaching process when our pupils chose to express themselves in Greek or in English, or when they brought examples from their Cypriot lives showed us that we also need to connect to our pupils’ Cypriot experiences. Our task was to find ways to include the Cypriot culture and Greek and English languages in the Hungarian activities in order to build on the pupils’ previous experiences when processing new information. We aimed to use their background knowledge connected to Cyprus, often in Greek and English as a scaffold for learning about the Hungarian culture and language.
Is winter in Cyprus the same as in Hungary? And how is it depicted in culture and traditions? Can the theory of translanguaging help with learning?
This became evident for example when we talked about the Hungarian habits and traditions linked to the seasons. Winter in Cyprus is very different from that of Hungary: while Cyprus becomes green in winter, and the weather is mild, winter in Hungary can be quite cold and freezing. Most of the Hungarian traditional tales, songs and nursery rhymes depict the frozen, snowy winter of Hungary. Comparing the winter of Cyprus to that of Hungary helps students learn about Hungary and its context and culture in more depth.
The same is true for the celebrations. For example, Christmas traditions are also different in certain features in the two countries. While learning about Hungarian Christmas traditions through songs and tales and celebration customs, we also observed the Cypriot traditions, because many of our pupils celebrate Christmas the Cypriot way. These experiences turned our interest toward a pedagogical approach that builds on pupils’ full cultural and linguistic background, named translanguaging (García & Kleyn, 2016).
Translanguaging is an approach for bilingual children’s education. The theory of translanguaging was developed by scholars (Li Wei 2018, Otheguy et al., 2019) who emphasize the unitary linguistic repertoire of bilinguals which means that bilingual individuals manage the entire set of linguistic resources they are familiar with when they speak. Bilingualism in the frame of translanguaging can refer to people with a unitary repertoire linked to more languages.
Following the principles of translanguaging, we regard bilinguals’ speech as the ways in which their individual repertoires operate. This means that when bilinguals speak and think, they rely on their previous experiences regardless of the language it is linked to. Due to our initial teaching experiences, we decided that the education of our pupils would be based on the translanguaging approach. Our efforts can be witnessed in the three Christmas celebrations we have had since the foundation of our school.
The three Christmas celebrations
In the first year, making the children become familiar with the Hungarian traditional nativity play, the so-called betlehemezés was in focus. In the second year, we chose a well-known Christmas story written by a popular Hungarian author and adapted to a modern Christmas play. The adaptation was a kind of modernization of the original tale by including elements that connect to the children’s everyday life. For example, we used a scooter as a stage prop for the journey to Santa, or we changed the names of the characters to more modern Hungarian names. In the third year, this Christmas, we wrote our own Christmas story together with the children. Here, Hungarian and Cypriot references are more consciously mingled. For example, we gave a Cypriot setting to the play by including two Cypriot cities in the storyline.
During lessons, children learned about the features of the Hungarian folk tales in more detail. This is why we incorporated some of the main elements of the Hungarian traditional folk fairy tales, such as the display of the magical number three with having three challenges, including magic in the story, depicting the fight of the evil and the good, and the plot ending with a happily ever after.
However, the main novelty this year was the event-closing song. For the finale, we chose to sing “Jingle Bells” because this Christmas song exists in Greek, English and in Hungarian as well. We sang the verses in Hungarian and the refrain first in English, next in Greek and finally in Hungarian. With this song adaptation we aimed to refer to the heterogeneous background of the children at the Christmas event.
Everybody knew the song in English, but we all had to learn the verses in Hungarian because the Hungarian translation is not a very well-known Christmas song in Hungary. The children who do not speak Greek had to learn the refrain in Greek, too. The teachers helped the parents and the children by writing down the Greek refrain with phonetical transcription. Despite the difficulties to memorize the unknown verses, we deliberately kept them in Hungarian, in order to strengthen the feeling of being Hungarian. However, by involving refrains in Greek and in English, we aimed to emphasize our common heritage, that we are Hungarians living in Cyprus. Additionally, we aimed to cherish the diversity of our backgrounds, to emphasize the uniqueness of our community and to nurture the sense of belonging. Belonging to a community with Hungarian heritage, in a town of Cyprus.
Video depicting children and teachers performing a song Jingle Bells – Τρίγωνα, κάλαντα – Csengőszó.
“Involving pupils’ non-Hungarian experiences can support the Hungarian as heritage language learning.”
All of these experiences show the importance of the context, as the heritage language school is operating in the host country, and the pupils either live or belong there. Building on the pupils’ entire linguistic repertoire and on the receiving country’s culture could enhance learning pupils’ heritage language. What we have seen is that involving pupils’ non-Hungarian experiences can support the Hungarian as heritage language learning. Thus, the language and the culture of the host country is relevant content in heritage language teaching.
A social media post of The Hungarian School of Pafos depicting the finale of the Christmas celebration.
Jingle Bells – Τρίγωνα, κάλαντα – Csengőszó
És a kis csikó a szánnal meg sem áll
Tág a lélek itt, akár a láthatár
S jókedvünknek hangjait a szél is tudja már
Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Oh what fun it is to ride
in a one-horse open sleigh. Hey!
Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells,
jingle all the way.
Oh what fun it is to ride
in a one-horse open sleigh. Hey!
És a kis csikó a szánnal meg sem áll
Tág a lélek itt, akár a láthatár
S jókedvünknek hangjait a szél is tudja már
Τρίγωνα κάλαντα μεσ στη γειτονιά
Ήρθαν τα χριστούγεννα κι η πρωτοχρονιά
És a kis csikó a szánnal meg sem áll
Tág a lélek itt, akár a láthatár
S jókedvünknek hangjait a szél is tudja már
Kis szánunkkal a csengős csikó nagy vidáman fut
Csengőszó, csengőszó, cseng és bong az út
Kis szánunkkal a csengős csikó nagy vidáman fut
Christmas Card by the students and teachers of the Hungarian School of Pafos.
References
García, O., & Tatyana K. (2016). Translanguaging theory
in education. In Ofelia García & Tatyana Kleyn (eds.): Translanguaging with
Multilingual Students: Learning from Classroom Moments, 9–33. New York:
Routledge.
Li Wei. (2018). Translanguaging as a practical theory of
language. Applied linguistics 39(1). 9–30.
Otheguy, R., García, O., & Reid, W. (2019). A translanguaging view of the linguistic system of bilinguals. Applied Linguistics Review, 10(4), 625–651. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2018-0020.