“Creating the illusion of speaking Romanian well”: Hungarian speakers’ teaching and learning the majority language in Romania

Abstract

Abstract The case study of the article is translanguaging as an educational strategy in preparation for the graduation exam in Romanian language and literature in a Hungarian school in Miercurea Ciuc/Csíkszereda, Romania. Romanian language competence scores are at the bottom of national rankings in this Hungarian-majority town in Szeklerland. Students who speak a minority language have their knowledge of the majority language evaluated in the graduation exam in Romanian language and literature based on the same criteria as first-language speakers’, which has strong implications for their participation in Romanian society. The main research question of this ethnographically informed article is how translanguaging happens in a classroom where students’ first language is being used with the aim of facilitating performance in their second language. The article argues that in the classrooms where the research was conducted, translanguaging is a strategy that negotiates between students’ educational needs in the local environment and the expectation espoused by the state to perform as if they were monolingual Romanian speakers. Similarly, students use translanguaging to strategize between the curricular expectations and their language performance. Yet, I argue that in this case study the emancipatory potential of translanguaging is limited due to ethnolinguistic hierarchies that remain unchallenged.