Language dispute in kindergarten

Dialect is more than just a linguistic art form, in this country it is something like an identity, an attitude to life. And it is almost always a highly emotional, often political issue. This was recently demonstrated by the popular initiative «Yes to dialect in kindergarten», which was voted on in several cantons.

While Zurich adopted the initiative in 2011 and the canton of Aargau in 2014, it was rejected in the canton of Zug in 2016. The Yes vote in Aargau had consequences: Since the regulation came into force in the 2016/17 school year, typically Swiss terms such as «Znüni» and «Finkli» have been officially recognised in kindergarten, so to speak. And because the Swiss school system is very diverse, mixed forms are certainly possible. For example, a kindergarten teacher in my community occasionally teaches High German, sings High German songs and recites High German verses.

The fear that children in kindergartens where only dialect is spoken are at a disadvantage when learning standard language (written and spoken High German) has recently been refuted. According to a study, the dialect has neither a positive nor a negative influence on the standard German that the children learn later. Together with the Rorschach School of Speech Therapy and the universities of teacher education in Graubünden, Weingarten (Germany) and Vorarlberg (Austria), the University of Teacher Education St. Gallen spent three years researching the effects of dialect and High German as languages of instruction on children's writing development.

200 professionals and 849 children in 117 kindergartens in the Lake Constance region were tested three times over a period of two years. In Switzerland, kindergartens from Zurich, St. Gallen, Graubünden and Aargau were involved. On the one hand, the children took a writing test. They were given a sheet of paper with pictures and wrote the words on it. On the other hand, they took a speaking test in which they had to hear sounds, recognise rhymes and clap syllables. According to study director Cordula Löffler, the results can be summarised as follows: At the beginning of the last year of kindergarten, 36 per cent of the children were already able to correctly translate individual or several sounds of the pictured words into letters; by the end of the kindergarten year, the figure was 38 per cent. In the spring of year one, the majority of children were able to write a large proportion of the words.

Hardly any progress with writing in kindergarten

«The study shows that the choice of language in kindergarten has no influence on writing development,» says Franziska Vogt, Head of the Institute for Teaching and Learning Research at the University of Teacher Education St. Gallen. The way in which children experience bilingualism in kindergarten is important for language development.

Incidentally, the test result did not change when those children whose teachers had only spoken dialect were considered separately. «We were unable to identify any statistically significant influence of the use of dialect or High German on the acquisition of written language,» says Franziska Vogt.

In this country, it is rather rare for only High German to be spoken in nursery schools. However, the questions of whether foreign-language children should learn our dialect and whether High German should be spoken to Swiss children are causing a stir. The researchers have a clear opinion on this and are in favour of uniformity. «It makes no sense to speak dialect in class but address a foreign-language child in High German,» says Vogt. «Under no circumstances should children with German as a second language be treated differently to children with German as their mother tongue,» emphasises Alexandra Zaugg from the Graubünden University of Teacher Education. Discrimination should be avoided at all costs.

Foreign speakers must learn both languages

Another finding of the study was that it is important for teachers to switch from dialect to High German for the whole class. Children need to realise that dialect and High German are two different «languages», but foreign speakers need to learn both idioms: «A child belongs to the group if it speaks dialect like the others. As a result, they will speak much more, and that is a gain,» says Regina Queitsch, a teacher at a university of applied sciences in Gengenbach, Germany. In fact, there are already big differences in children's language skills when they start kindergarten. According to Vogt, some foreign-language children can barely speak German when they start kindergarten because they did not go to a playgroup or daycare centre and have had little social contact. This is one of the reasons why the authors of the study are in favour of High German being spoken regularly at kindergarten. Another advantage is that it makes the transition to school easier for the children.

Dialect or High German: this debate is not just for political reasons. It has long been known from linguistic research that the standard language, i.e. High German, tends to be perceived as a language of distance and dialect as a language of closeness. According to linguists such as Horst Sitta, «hard» school subjects tend to be taught in standard German, while «soft» subjects such as music or drawing tend to be taught in dialect. This makes it clear what the declared aim of the High German offensive in kindergarten is: the language of proximity, which is traditionally the dialect, is to be replaced by the standard language in the school context. It is hoped that this will lead to advantages in reading and writing skills, which will later have an impact on career choices. The fact that parts of everyday school life are taught in standard German, while others are taught in dialect, is to be welcomed, says Swiss linguist Raphael Berthele in an essay on the study. This is because a conscious use of both language forms offers considerable potential.