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ZITA TÜNDIK
teacher

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At the beginning of the lesson,

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I started reading the texts in Romani

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but I was intrigued to find out
how my students will fair.

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What we see in this video is the moment

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when I hand over my place,
also symbolically, to the story’s reader.

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We can also hear the pupil's
Hungarian translation after some sentences.

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My aim was to improve
my students’ ability to

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create texts in Hungarian
through translation.

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The pupils read from these two pages.

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The texts were originally translated from
Hungarian into Romani by local women.

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My dear children!
May this evening bring us luck!

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I am going to tell you a story
about an old Gypsy man

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who lived in Keléd with his son, Kinni.

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They were both out
and about in the village all the time.

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Once, and old peasant said to them:

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‘My horse is up for sale, come and buy it!’
‘You want to part with your horse?’ – asked the old Gypsy man.

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‘Yes, I do’ -- answered the peasant.
 ‘I am selling it.’

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‘How much do you want for it?’
‘Give me five pengoe and it’s yours.’

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They made a deal and
put it all down on paper.

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They old Gypsy bought the horse.
He was leading it home,

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proud of his purchase,
when he suddenly noticed that

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it could not see anything.

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The horse was blind.
He thought about it long and hard,

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whether to return it or not. Finally,

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he decided that a blind horse was
a good horse, too. He drove it home.

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You know, children,
Gypsies love horses very much,

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and Kinni’s father was no exception.

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I’d like to ask you to come
 and take my place.

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I think you will be able to read
 the tale much better than me.

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You know, I don’t understand
 the language very well.

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Look, that’s where I stopped.

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I AM GOING TO TELL YOU A STORY ABOUT

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AN OLD GYPSY
WHO LIVED IN VASVÁRI WITH HIS SON, KINNI.

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THEY WERE BOTH OUT
 AND ABOUT IN THE VILLAGE ALL THE TIME.

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ONCE, AND OLD PEASANT SAID TO THEM:

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‘MY HORSE IS UP FOR SALE, COME AND BUY IT!’

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Let’s see what you have understood
from the reading.

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That he should buy it for 50.000.

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Buy the horse for 50.000!

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His mummy said
THAT HE SHOULD SELL THE HORSE.

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 HE SHOULD BUY THE HORSE FOR 50.000

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Wait a minute,
you have now spoken in Romani,

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and I don’t understand that.

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She said that they should buy
the horse for 50.000

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and they will half the costs,
 the old man and…

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He said that they should buy the horse,

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and his mother said
that he should give it to them.

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She will now try to continue the reading.

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Look, that’s where
 the previous reader stopped.

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But listen quietly,

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you can even close your eyes.

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THEY MADE A NICE DEAL.

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AND PUT IT ALL DOWN ON PAPER.

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THEN THE OLD GYPSY
 GOT THE HORSE RIGHT AWAY.

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It said that they wrote

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something nice on the paper.

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They made a deal with the old man that

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he would buy the horse

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but the horse could not see.

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Was the horse blind?

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(mixed voices): Yes!

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 I must admit
I was somewhat disappointed

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when I heard my students,

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who read flawlessly in Hungarian,

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read Romani with such difficulty.

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But then I recalled how difficult

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it was for me to read the texts.

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Even if they speak Romani

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as their mother tongue,

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this was the first time

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 they saw it in writing,

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and neither they nor

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I have had substantial
 prior experience reading Romani.

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Yet the production of texts in Hungarian
 was very successful.

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All students took part in translating.

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BERNADETT JANI-DEMETRIOU
doctoral researcher

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Research in psycholinguistics uses
two different models

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 for the process of reading:
a bottom-up and a top-down model.

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The former is data-driven, the latter is
grounded in pre-existing knowledge.

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The top-down model suggests that readers
 do not start out by recognising letters,

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linking them to speech sounds,
and putting those together into words.

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Instead, based on their
pre-existing knowledge,

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they identify entire words as images, and
retrieve these images from their memory.

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When reading a text in Romani, the children
cannot rely on top-down processing,

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as they have no pre-existing knowledge to
support the retrieval of the images

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linked with words from their memory.

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This is understandable as
they have never encountered a text before

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 that is written in their home language.

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The text was written with the letters
and writing conventions of Hungarian,

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so, the pupils can rely only on
the bottom-up process, namely on

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the identification of letters

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and their association with
sounds and syllables.

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This is the reason
we might feel that

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their reading is
slow and fragmented.

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ILDIKÓ VANCO
researcher

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There is evidence in the recording

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that real understanding was taking place,

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despite the fact that for the children
this was an unusual situation,

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 in which when they had to read in Romani,

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which they had no prior experience reading.

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Hence, they focused strongly
on identifying letters,

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they used no suprasegmentals
in their reading, no intonation either.

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Yet, those who listened
were able to react to

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what they were hearing,

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they looked forward to contributing,
translating, and expressing themselves

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in Romani in a situation
which affected them emotionally.

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They found themselves
 in an unusual situation

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in which the main role was played by

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the language most familiar to them: Romani.

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PETRA RÉKA BOROS
graduate student

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We notice that there is
a shared process of interpretation

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in which the pupils participate jointly.

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Often, a pupil mentions
a particular detail from the text,

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translates it into Hungarian, and then

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they start fine-tuning the translation,
making it really Hungarian.

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The teacher makes good use of the fact that

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she understands the text less well
than the children.

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This allows her to rely on the children’s
 translation and interpretation.

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This is all the more interesting
because the children

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who read have never seen
 a Romani written text either,

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 but they respond to the task adequately,

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which paves the way for an active,

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participatory process of shared
interpretation between the children.