Main Aims and Methods

The main aims of the research were the following: (a) to compare multilinguals of different age groups and (b) to defi ne the infl uence of multilingualism on learn-ing foreign languages (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) The research had been carried out in my native town, Aknaszlatina with the help of questionnaires, interviews and observations. The questionnaires consisted of two parts: general question, aiming to get acquainted with the individuals, learning about the languages they speak, language skills they possess, their relation towards languages, mainly the English language; practical tasks – including translation of “provocative” words and sentence translation, according which one can learn about the interference and assimilation made by multilingual individuals.

The 90 examined multilinguals were divided into three categories: young teen-agers (n=30), school-leavers (n=30) and adults (n=30). Analyzing the data some of the gotten results could be foreshadowed, however others were quite surprising.

2.2 Results

2.2.1 Language Usage Among Multilinguals of Aknaszlatina

The peculiarities of Transcarpathia are multilingualism, colourful culture and the variety of religion. It is obligatory to learn and to know the state language for all minorities.

The language policy infl uences the teaching and usage of one or another language in education. This process greatly infl uences the citizen’s language knowledge.

In the situation of bi- or multilingual language usage the norm is not when everyone speak his own language. In such multicultural sphere, the minority or the majority know and speaks the language of the other group. The spread of Tran-scarpathian multilingualism among the Hungarian minority is a one-sided situa-tion, because the Hungarians more or less acquire the language of the majority groups. However, the members of the mentioned majority groups are less familiar with other languages of their region (Csernicskó, 2010).

The village now known as Aknaszlatina had many names before, namely: Za-latina, Zlathina, Zlathyna Pathaka, SzZa-latina, Slatinsky-Doly, Szolotvino, etc. It is mentioned even in Great Lajos King’s decree, in 1360. Aknaszlatina is the South-Eastern part of Transcarpathia. The village lies on the right bank of the River Tisa,

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between the Salavan and the Magura. The river is the border between Ukraine and Romania. That is one of the main reasons why the village is multicultural. It en-counters more than 10 000 inhabitants: among them are Hungarians, Ukrainians, Russians, Romanians, Jewish, etc. (Kovách, 2000).

The village was famous for its salt-mines, which in the present they are not in working conditions, and salt-lakes which are visited by many tourists from the whole world every year: Hungary, Russia, Slovakia, Moldova, Czech Republic, France, Germany, etc. It is well-known that the allergological hospital and the salt-mines help people suffering from allergy and bronchial-asthma.

The fi rst school was opened in 1778, which was a Hungarian one (Kovách, 2000). Till nowadays a Hungarian school does exist, and in addition there are four other schools as well: Romanian, Ukrainian-Russian, a boarding school and the school of Art. In Transcarpathia, many families are mixed and Aknaszlatina is not an exception. Usually every person speaks more languages, such as Hungarian, Romanian or/and Russian. Thus parents or children can choose the language they prefer speaking.

The results proved that citizens of Aknaszlatina are multilinguals, due to the variety of languages spoken on daily bases: majority of Hungarians are able to speak Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian; Romanians are good mostly in Ukrainian and Russian (because of education), but a number of them do speak Hungarian as well; Ukrainians are defi nitely speak Russian and a high number is good in Hun-garian and/or Romanian too.

According to the results, Ukrainian and/or Russian languages, by none-native speakers, are mainly used at school, at work, offi ces, among friends and for hob-bies (e.g.: social media, reading, etc.). Hungarian and Romanian languages are mostly used among friends by none-native speakers. Due to the fact that English is a compulsory language at schools, the majority of students in Aknaszlatina use this language only in the sphere of education; although there is a small number of those who use the English language for hobbies, for instance watching fi lms, surfi ng the internet, etc.

Lingua Franca was already mentioned as the language which serves as a bridge between people who has no language in common. In Aknaszlatina Russian language still survives as LF among none-native speakers (Palágyi, 2011). Interestingly, the young generation, which does not study the language, have high Russian language skills: while some of multilinguals mixes it with the Ukrainian and only the listen-ing skill is developed enough, others have good speaklisten-ing, writlisten-ing and readlisten-ing skills.

The following fi gures illustrate the usage of Russian in certain circumstances:

1. HU+RO=RU – when a Hungarian communicates with a Romanian 2. RU+RO= RU – when a Russian communicates with a Romanian 3. RU+UA= RU/UA – when a Russian communicates with a Ukrainian

per-son, Russian, Ukrainian or both languages are used at the same time.

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2.2.2 Relation Towards the English Language

One of the questions related to the English language aimed to defi ne speakers’

relation towards the foreign language. Young teenagers and school-leavers might be in an easier situation, because they learn English since primary classes and have English lessons at least three times a week, while the majority of adults had never learnt English. This fact makes the research more interesting. The current part of the research focuses on the infl uence of other languages on acquiring the English. It was hypothesized that speakers who had never learnt this language or do not have high language profi ciency might be either infl uenced positively and translate the words correctly, or negatively – being confused by the ‘provocative’

words and make wrong associations. All in all, summarizing the answers concern-ing the English language usage, it becomes obvious that none of the groups uses the language on a daily bases. The majority of young teenagers faces the English language only at school and believes it to be a diffi cult one to be learnt. School-leavers states that they do understand, but use it very rarely. One would have thought that teenagers are deeply in the usage of foreign languages because of the trends modern life with different technological equipments and social media, but unfortunately English is not yet popular among youngsters of this area. Inter-estingly, a high number of adults claimed to understand the language and know some words, however not using them at all. This result may be the consequence of not being brave enough because neither having a basic educated background nor practice.

English language is a dominant one in the whole world. It is common knowl-edge that it has a ruling power and EFL is transforming into ESL. Many people feel this language to be important enough so as to learn or acquire. For instance, Indians (Graddol, 2010) believe that the successful future of the new generation and the country in general lies in acquiring the English language. I was interested how our people felt toward this language, which is apart from many countries it is still a foreign one in our country.

The results are not what the majority would expect. Unfortunately, young teenagers do not like learning English and do it as a must; school-leavers pretend English not being important and do not want to understand its necessity. Accord-ing to the given answers, a number of respondents claimed that they use English, but rarely. This are cases when the language is not compulsory and they can use it freely for listening to music, reading information of the internet and playing com-puter games. It is a common knowledge that students do not enjoy and even do not like what “compulsory”. English could be made fun to learn. Numerous online games (learning vocabulary, grammar, etc), English fi lms, songs, board games and BBC tasks could be given to learners of different. Interestingly, adults would be willing to learn the language, but the majority believes to be too old to start learning a new one. Sharing and spreading the information of job opportunities MARIANNA NEGRE

requiring English could motivate elderly multilinguals too. Organizing language courses, conversation clubs, fi lm clubs and advertising online courses could be good solutions to change people’s relation towards language learning.

2.2.3 Translation

The same list of words was given to the three groups of speakers. All the words can be associated to particular words in other languages, such as Romanian, Ukrain-ian, Russian; but not all of them would be correct if translating with method of association. Due to the infl uence of the Ukrainian/Russian language both the ma-jority of young teenagers and adults faced interference by translating the English word ‘magazine’ as ‘shop’ into their mother tongue. One must understand the reason: both in Ukrainian and Russian the word “магазин” (shop) has the similar pronunciation as the English ‘magazine’, the given answers can be explained by the infl uence of the state language or the current LF. In addition, a high number of school-leavers caused the same mistake. The process of translating another Eng-lish word ‘fact’ was also infl uenced by the Ukrainian/Russian. More than half of the participants in all the three groups could not fi nd the appropriate word in their mother tongue (Hungarian and Romanian), thus they simply adapted the particu-lar words, such as fact=fakt, pirate=pirate, etc. This result can be also explained by the infl uence of the state language and LF. The reason is that the same pronun-ciation of these words in Ukrainian/Russian has the same meaning. By the way, multilinguals of Aknaszlatina do not use a number words in their mother tongue, but rather adapt them during codeswitching, thus the word ‘fact’ is natural for them as it is in English (maybe with some little spelling changes). Such English words, as for instance ‘organ’ or ‘attention’ were mainly correctly translated into L1, due to the infl uence of Ukrainian and Romanian languages.

Diagram 1

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3 Conclusion

Summarizing the theoretical consideration, there are different opinions about the characteristics of a bi-/multilingual speakers, because different factors can be taken into consideration. Thus, Crystal (1997) indicates specifi c individuals: those who make irregular use of one or other language, those who have not used the particu-lar language for years, people who have developed a considerable skill in compre-hending a foreign language, but who do not speak it and those who had developed good reading skill in another language, but not speak or write it. According to Gort (2007) there are several advantages of bi- and multilingualism, among them are communicative, cultural and cognitive advantages. An interesting, but at the same time common phenomenon among multilingual individuals is the code-switching.

Many researchers and linguists, for example Crystal (1997), Belikov and Krysin (2001), Csernicskó (2010), Palágyi (2011) and many others focus on this process, the reason of which may be various (easier expression, solidarity, etc). Speaking about multilingualism, we must not forget to mention Transcarpathia, the region where multilingualism is a natural phenomenon for the most of the inhabitants. The

“sign” of multilingualism can be noticed everywhere: on advertisements, posts, in shops, banks, etc. It is also a territory where the Russian language still remained the lingua franca, which infl uences the daily life of national minorities (Palágyi, 2011).

All in all, it can be stated that students are not motivated, feel the English lan-guage too diffi cult and not willing to develop their lanlan-guage skills. Unfortunately the majority are not aware of the advantages of the English language knowledge as well as different opportunities due to the certain knowledge level of the tar-get language, for instance international programs. Young teenagers and adults are more enthusiastic than school-leavers, but still it is not enough to be able to make the usage of this certain foreign language a commonplace. Interference of differ-ent forms appeared in all given translations. Due to the results, the ‘provocative’

words can be divided into three categories: (a) words which lead to interference (e.g. magazine), (b) words of which the L1 equivalent is to fi nd (e.g. fact) and (c) those which due to multilingualism are translated correctly (e.g. attention).

All in all, the research draws the picture of multilinguals’ world view in Aknaszlatina. Not being aware of many advantages, youth programs as well as job opportunities, people of this area are not interested in learning the English language. It might be the fault of the wrong language introduction at schools.

Students should be taught to love studying languages and be shown the many opportunities and options. Probably other motivation methods are required. Liv-ing in the 21^th century not only school children, but adults can also be motivated.

Languages courses could be organized, information about international programs should be spread as well as individuals’ attention should be attracted to the lan-guage learning side of social networks.

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