TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS REGIONAL DIALECTS IN HUNGARY

: Hungarians, in general, are taught sociolinguistic content on the value of linguistic diversity and especially of regional varieties during their compulsory education. However, stereotypical misbeliefs on speakers of regional dialect remain, which along with standard based culture, seem to be behind the current debates based on prejudice or even the cause of linguistic discrimina- tion. The present study seeks an explanation of the problem by investigating teachers’ linguistic attitudes and practice related to the dialect background of their students. The main hypothesis to be tested in the study is that while, on the one hand, the National Curriculum promotes attitudes of tolerance, practice suggests that such attitudes are present only in theory and that prescriptive lessons on dialectal variety contribute prejudices in many speakers of the Hungarian community, even among youngsters. While students are taught to be proud of their regional dialects, insufficient information about dialectal variety leads to problems of acceptance, although the study of one’s own regional background could be an advantage for developing metalinguistic awareness. The study emphasizes that this ambivalence is rooted in the insufficiency of teacher training in Higher Education in connection with language variability and in the lack of useful methodological support mechanism. Therefore, the study recommends some of the latest educational material on the investigated topic. by numerous data and to find some reasons for the ambivalent attitudes and practice of teachers with relation to dialects. The presents the results of an empirical research study that was conducted by the author from 2015 to 2017. It investigates teachers’ knowledge and attitudes to regional dialects and their everyday practice in public education and aims at answering the following research questions (RQ):


Introduction
As a natural consequence of a natural and living language, Hungarian has its regional varieties.
Most Hungarians, even members of the younger generations in a dialect region, acquire regionalisms during their (language) socialization as natural aspects of their mother tongue. Additionally, the main goal of mother tongue education is to teach the Standard Hungarian as the only official and prestigious variety, which can be added to the dialect background by developing metalinguistic awareness and the teaching of the importance of style-shifting. However, in their everyday practice, teachers tend to shift dialects to the Standard for their pedagogical evaluation and by correcting the language use of students without any further explanation, despite the National Curriculum of Hungarian public education highlighting the regional variability of the language as a piece of national treasure.
The National Curriculum, as an edict, is the basic document of public education in Hungary indicating which topics are to be taught and to what extent in each year of compulsory education (12 years in general and 13 in bilingual education) and which kind of skills and competences are to be developed in relation to each topic. The content of the secondary school entrance exam, and of the school leaving exam at the end of secondary grammar school or vocational school (4 or 5 years), in addition to the content of the official text books and exercise books, are all based on the recommendations of the National Curriculum (cf. Nat). The latest version of this document was inspired by sociolinguistic approaches. It promotes the respect and toleration of regionalisms, although teachers often fail to meet this expectation as they did not receive adequate input in order to learn and teach basic information on language variability through many decades of Hungarian teacher education programmes. As Trudgill (2008) explained, the problem is rooted in the centralised society and education policy, that also characterized Hungary in the second half of the 20 th century. This resonates with the situation in other countries: "In the UK at least, most teachers learned very little about language during their own education, either at school or at university, so it seems unrealistic to suggest that they should be teaching (and doing) linguistics in the classroom. How can they teach a subject that they don't know?" (Hudson, 2004:124). Due to the low level of metalinguistic awareness, most Hungarians know nothing about the variability of languages and the diversity of their mother tongue. Therefore, they know nothing about their own or others' dialect background, and the stigmatization of regional dialects as 'bad languages' (cf. Hudson, 2004) is still typical in the linguistic mentality of the Hungarian speech community. It leads to numerous, although unnecessary debates in everyday communication and restrains the undertaking of regional identity and tolerant behaviour within many communities. The present paper does not blame Hungarian teachers but aims to investigate their knowledge, attitudes and practice related to dialects in order to get closer to the roots of the problem. . Teachers' attitudes towards regional dialects in Hungary. Didacticae, 8, 59-77.

Literature review
The Hungarian language area, that is not equal to the territory of present-day Hungary since 1920, has ten main dialect regions that also divide into many smaller dialect groups. With the exception of the Moldavian dialect region that is spoken in the territory of Romania and has many archaisms and contact phenomena, Hungarian dialects do not differ to a great extent from one another. Therefore, problems of comprehension are minimal. Structural and pragmatic factors of dialect use are continuously changing (cf. Hegedűs, 2005 andKiss, 2017; for recent results cf. e.g., Czetter et al., 2016;Guttmann&Molnár, 2007;Hajba, 2012;Kontra et al., 2016), but numerous regional language forms can still be revealed among young speakers (cf. Parapatics, 2016Parapatics, , 2018a and 2020). A considerable number of studies of Hungarian dialects in a dimensional view of language (Juhász, 2002) draws attention to historical priority and outstanding variegation of regional varieties (Hegedűs, 2016;Kiss, 2017), emphasizes their own rules, logic and complexity that make them independent language systems that are also correct according to their own language norm (Péntek, 2015).
As previously mentioned, while these facts are all represented in the National Curriculum, general stigmatization of Hungarian dialects still exists and has a critical effect on everyday life.
Most native speakers of Hungarian know nothing about language variability and hold misbeliefs on dialect speakers, who are imagined as old village-ladies with scarves on their heads, driving chickens in their garden, or workers in the vineyard, or maybe Transylvanian Hungarian boys and girls in traditional folk costume dancing the csárdás. According to these misbeliefs, dialect speech cannot be imagined as a characteristic of well-educated people; therefore, dialect phonemes are usually mocked, while dialect syntax and words are regarded as mistakes. Since teachers are not adequately trained to manage these phenomena and as textbooks also sometimes represent the same misbeliefs (see Streli, 2009), they will not be able to change the linguistic mentality of the new generations. In fact, teachers often validate the autarky of the Standard (cf. Jánk, 2019; see also Kiss, 2015; for the importance of teachers' knowledge and metalinguistic knowledge, in the case of English language teaching: Gordon, 2005;Hudson, 2004;Myhill & Watson, 2013), rather than developing metalinguistic awareness that differentiates the functions and roles of the Standard and regional dialects (for discussion on concepts and terms of metalinguistic awareness see: Camps & Milian, 1999;Hudson, 2004;Myhill & Watson, 2013; on the concept of bidialectal education in Hungary: Kontra, 2003).
It is a well-known fact that language attitudes have an undeniable effect on the spread or retreat of language forms and variations, and also on linguistic judgements: when somebody uses a form that is or seems incorrect, they are regarded as low-educated and/or illiterate (for Hungarian examples cf. Kiss, 1995). The presented characteristic of linguistic mentality leads to the retreat of the regional diversity of Hungarian, although dialects bear covert prestige (Labov, 1966) due to the special functions that represent local identity and grant native speakers some comfort in their language use. To put it simply, a regional dialect is the language of home. As Maagerø and Simonsen (2005) added when referring to the Norwegian situation: "Writing Nynorsk might be a signal that your identity is more related to local values than to urban style, and that your local roots are of . Teachers' attitudes towards regional dialects in Hungary. Didacticae,8,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77] great importance to you" (cited by Husby ed., 2008:16). According to Labov (1964), the wider the social network speakers have and the more integrated they are in their groups, the more likely they are to accommodate to the pronunciation of the partners and peers, even at the age of 5 (although, the accommodation is rarely perfect, cf. Wagner et al., 2013). After attending public education for more than a decade, an ordinary Hungarian speaker will look for the single correct form of pronunciation, syntax and word-stock, which, living in a "standard language culture" (Milroy, 1999), means Standard Hungarian in every situation and context (for the retreating effects of public education on dialect use: Kinzler & DeJesus, 2013;Kiss, 1989). From this point of view, everything that differs from the Standard seems incorrect, and regional dialects are considered lower-order (albeit so-called "glocalizational" processes, Meyrowitz, 2005). Some typical sentences collected by passive observations of everyday life are: "What a destruction of illusions when you see a nice lady then she speaks like a peasant!"; "Where does this terrible dialect come from? Since we are in Hungary, can't you sing in Hungarian? The songs are unbearable with these »aá« phonemes!". Positive attitudes to regional dialects connected to the calm and happy provincial life of peasants are still connected to the lower levels of education (Kiss, 2017). As Heltainé Nagy stated: "Misbeliefs and stereotypes must be ruined at school, in society and sometimes also in science community in order to terminate discrimination and ignorance related to dialect speakers definitely" (Heltainé Nagy, 2004:105).
However, compulsory education in Hungary does not seem ready enough for addressing these misbeliefs. Students with dialect backgrounds can make many grammatical and orthographical mistakes in their oral and written school performances as they do not learn to differentiate the language form of their dialect and that of Standard Hungarian. Since Standard is the only language norm accepted in the mother tongue language use in Hungarian education, dialect background affects school achievement in a negative way. The handbook of Hungarian dialectology contains a special chapter on the issue of dialects and public education ) and a great number of Hungarian studies have investigated the impact of dialect background as a disadvantage on students' performance in orthography (Boda, 2011;Guttmann, 1996 andKoós, 2017;P. Lakatos, 1986;Parapatics, 2016Parapatics, , 2018aParapatics, and 2018bTörök, 1958), that might be avoided by developing metalinguistic awareness (cf. Myhill & Watson, 2013; on advantages of bidialectism beside a well-developed metalinguistic awareness: Vangsnes et al., 2017).
Nonetheless, some studies reveal a lack of knowledge of teachers and attendees of teacher education programs. As a recent study emphasized: only 11 of 19 Hungarian universities of the Carpathian Basin where the future teachers of Hungarian as first language are trained have compulsory Dialectology courses in their curriculum (Kiss, 2015). Another connecting study cites numerous experiences of university students about their course on the topic, e.g., "the course has not left deep traces in my mind… All I can remember from the course material is some curiosity of word-stock that was discovered by myself in language atlases and dictionaries" (Kiss, 2009: 11).
A quarter of the responding trainee teachers reported that they could not learn more about language and only one third of them have ever undertaken fieldwork. However, those who attended these kinds of trips admitted it changed their negative attitudes to dialects: "I found out how rich . Teachers' attitudes towards regional dialects in Hungary. Didacticae,8,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77] and colourful a dialect can be"; "Dialect speech doesn't bother me anymore"; "I don't think dialect speakers are incorrect speakers anymore"; "My prejudice has been reduced but hasn't come to an end totally" (cited by Kiss, 2009:12). An unambiguous consequence of this problem is that if teachers cannot explain dialect background to their student, newer and newer grammatical "mistakes" (according to the rules of Standard Hungarian) will continue to be made in schools.
The more mistakes are made and corrected, the more the negative attitude is developed towards dialect as mother tongue. The latest study in relation to the topic (Jánk, 2019), with more than 500 participants reported that students with dialect background are discriminated against by teachers or trainee teachers during the evaluation process (for further Hungarian examples of linguicism: Kontra, 2006).
Thus, the studies presented so far reveal a vital problem in first language education in Hungary, and the present study seeks to explore teachers' knowledge and attitudes towards regional dialects and their practice. The study investigates why teachers think and behave this way, against the recommendations of the National Curriculum and despite the endeavour to educate students in order to become open-minded in many (other) aspects of life. The idea of exploring the question was not only motivated by the literature that draws dialectologists' attention to the problem but also ten years of personal experience of the author as a grammar secondary school teacher of Hungarian as first language in a dialect region.

Aims and hypotheses
The main purpose of this study is to prove the existence and the actuality of the problem by analysing numerous data and to find some reasons for the ambivalent attitudes and practice of teachers with relation to dialects. The paper presents the results of an empirical research study that was conducted by the author from 2015 to 2017. It investigates teachers' knowledge and attitudes to regional dialects and their everyday practice in public education and aims at answering the following research questions (RQ): RQ1: What do Hungarian teachers think about regional dialects and dialect speakers?
RQ2: How do they handle a student with dialect background?
RQ3: Do they teach the topic of language variability at all?
RQ4: What support did the receive during their training?
The hypothesis that will be tested is that most teachers in Hungary believe the same myths of dialects as other members of society, therefore, the main stereotypes mentioned above are also represented by them in school (H1). Another hypothesis is that most teachers present positive attitudes to dialects in theory, but not to dialect forms of their students' language use (H2). Discovering their language attitudes and teaching practices provides an explanation for the linguistic mentality to regional dialects of the Hungarian speech community and offers an opportunity to draw further strategic steps in order to find a solution. . Teachers' attitudes towards regional dialects in Hungary. Didacticae, 8, 59-77.
The hypotheses were also strengthened by the results of another related research that was conducted by the author in 2017 in which more than 500 Hungarian university students were asked about their knowledge, attitudes towards regional dialects and their experiences of being corrected or even laughed at due to their own dialect background. The study clearly demonstrates that students who had just taken their high school leaving exam, only a couple of months or years before being invited as respondents (i.e., who had to learn about language variability and regional dialects), held quite stereotypical attitudes to the phenomenon and refused many language features of regional backgrounds, while they thought of themselves as tolerant people. They also reported hundreds of experiences when their own language use was corrected and the examples make it clear that those situations were motivated by regional differences (Parapatics, 2019a). The results also suggest that 12 years of compulsory education in Hungary (6 years of middle school and 6 years of high school, or 8 years of middle school and 4 years of high school) does not adequately address the actual issue of discrimination against regional dialects, and does not promote the positive attitudes that are recommended by laws, albeit some teachers' willingness to do so.

Data and method
Results of the above-mentioned study (Parapatics, 2019a) suggested that Hungarian students leave public education with a low level of dialect awareness in general, despite (at least in theory) respect for language diversity being addressed. Exploring an explanation of this ambivalence, teachers were asked about their attitudes and everyday school practice. In order to reach as many teachers as possible a self-made paper-based questionnaire was designed and shared personally and Being a teacher in Hungary is less and less engaging for the younger generations, especially for males, due to salary issues and other problems of the educational system. According to the latest OECD study, depending on the level of education, up to 10 times more female teachers are working in Hungary than males. More and more young teachers leave schools in their first years as professionals or even before starting and without practicing it, therefore the average age of Hungarian teachers is almost 50. Almost half of the teachers are older than 50 and it is also more and more common that teachers return to school to teach, following retirement, especially in those subjects that lack active teachers (e.g., Physics and Mathematics) (for all the data see: https://data. . Teachers' attitudes towards regional dialects in Hungary. Didacticae,8,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77] oecd.org). The other main difficulty in reaching a stratified sample for the present study is related to a new teachers' career model that was initiated in 2013, only 2 years before the data collection for the present study began. According to this model, teachers are expected to write portfolios and pass teaching exams even after decades of teaching, in order to progress on the salary scale (which is still the second lowest within the OECD countries). They were quite reluctant to be respondents as many teachers regarded the questionnaire as another exam in which they were to be tested and they refused to complete it. Due to these difficulties, the study aimed at collecting a random sample among Hungarian teachers that is large enough to gain general conclusions. Also, these problems motivated the use of a paper-based questionnaire that was copied and posted to schools following the organization of the data collection with a contact person who shared it with their colleagues and then returned them to the author. In light of the above-mentioned age issues and mentality, an online survey would not have been as good a choice, as personal interviews.  All the data were coded and processed in Microsoft Excel. The analysis combines quantitative and qualitative data: besides presenting statistical data, the paper also cites a great number of opinions from the participants to illustrate teachers' approaches to the matter (for this kind of combination in Hungarian studies on the topic: Jánk, 2019; Kontra et al., 2016). The answers are cited in English by translation and brackets after the quotes contains gender and age of the participants, the school type in which they are employed and the subject(s) they teach in middle and secondary school.

Findings
All respondents consider it worthly to promote dialects as a national tradition, and they are all keen to respect and teach dialects. However, they do not know how to turn this into particular actions. As a resonation with the regulations of the National Curriculum, all respondents gave an account of sociolinguistic viewpoint when they were asked about dialects directly. But their answers to further questions (e.g., "Are you a dialect speaker?"; "How do you react when your student uses a dialect?"; "Who do you think a dialect speaker is?") revealed the real lack of knowledge and awareness with relation to dialects.  . Teachers' attitudes towards regional dialects in Hungary. Didacticae,8,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77] Teachers' answers on regional dialects Which misbeliefs do they reflect?
"It should be saved and preserved as an animal or a plant species on the verge of extinction" (male, 31, secondary, Hungarian) Dialects are on the verge of extinction.
Therefore, dialects should be saved.
"It's a language that is used in regions and that is very savoury" (male, 59, middle, History) Dialects are special, more beautiful than Standard Hungarian.
"We should save it because it's an archaic, worthy variety" (female, 52, middle, Hungarian) Both. "I think it's a treasure that we should take care of and preserve" (female, 50, middle, Music) "It's funny, a pleasure to listen but it's about to extinct" (female, 47, secondary, German and History) There were many answers that seem to show tolerant attitudes on the surface but ambivalent and misleading information in reality (Table 3).

Expressions that show covert negative attitudes
Meaning of these expressions "Hungary has regions where a dialect is spoken […] They can also speak in a correct way, if they want, but they prefer to speak this way in their homeland that is beautiful in my opinion" (female, 48, primary) speak in a correct way Standard is correct, dialect is incorrect.
"I think it's not ugly, it's respectable, because we nurtures our ancestors' tradition […] When we learn and teach and when we are with people who don't use this, we also ought to speak (clearly) Hungarian […] when they pronounce words in an incorrect way I specify" (female, 52, middle, Maths and Geography)

ought to speak (clearly) Hungarian; incorrect way
Standard is the clear form.
Dialect speech is a mistake.
"Dialect speech is interesting. It only has to be corrected if the child speaks a very archaic language but in case of mixing phonemes it is not necessary" (female, 36, primary) mixing phonemes Dialect speech means mixing phonemes.
"…nurturing would be important and not uprooting it […] But in some cases too «simple» forms that really don't fit the Standard must be corrected" (female, 47, middle, Hungarian)

too «simple» forms; that really don't fit the Standard
Dialects are simpler than Standard.
Standard is the prestigious variety.
"Dialect speech can be nice, savoury if someone composes in a neat way" (female, 61, middle, Hungarian) if…neat way Dialects are not neat on their own.
"I like it, I think it's nice when someone knows and uses the dialect of his/her home. It can be bothering in some types of job" (female, 46, secondary, Music) can be bothering Dialects are nice but it should be avoided in some situation.
"It doesn't bother me personally but if speech is hard to be understood due to it I would correct it" (female, 26, secondary, Maths and Physics) if…hard to be understood…I would correct Dialect forms should be corrected instead of being explained.
"Dialect speech is nice in that dialect region but in order to reach the mother tongue level it should be corrected" (female, 52, primary) to reach the mother tongue level…corrected A high level of language competence cannot be reached while using a dialect.
"If dialect speech is does not bother anyone I don't think it should be corrected" (female, 36, secondary, English) if…not bothering Dialect can be bothering, the solution is to correct it.
"Extent is important" (female, 53, middle, Hungarian) extent Dialect forms can be used but not so much.
"You don't need to correct. During a Hungarian lesson, a school-leaving exam definitely but not in everyday use" (female, 41, secondary, English)

during a Hungarian lesson, a school-leaving exam
Dialects don't go well with important situations.
"Dialect speech is nice and should be preserved. Unfortunately, most dialect speakers are discriminated against. Dialect speech is often identified with lower level of intelligence, dialect speakers can be mocked" (female, 41, secondary, English) This participant answered to another question later that dialect speakers are low-educated, albeit more options (see below). Table 3. Ambivalent attitudes to dialects.
The next question asked the respondents to choose from many options asking who a dialect speaker is. Figure 2 shows that a considerable number of the subjects perceive the same stereotypical characters of dialect speakers as mentioned above, and only 20 teachers of the 170 know that using regional language forms does not depend on age, education or the type of settlement, while most respondents complained about stigmatization of dialect speakers as low-educated members of society. . Teachers' attitudes towards regional dialects in Hungary. Didacticae, 8, 59-77. It is not surprising in light of these results that 134 of them answered the question "Do you have dialect speech?" that they do not and 144 answered the same about their students' language use. This kind of knowledge and attitude leads to an everyday practice when dialect speech is corrected as an incorrect form of "the" Hungarian language without being aware of its background. All participants with students with dialect backgrounds, reported they encourage them to be proud of it, even those who wrote in other points of the questionnaire that it is related to lower education and it has to be corrected. Due to this linguistic mentality, all positive attitudes to dialects and tolerant language behaviour remain theoretical in textbooks and in the National Curriculum, in connection with an imagined traditional, archive form of Hungarian.
One third of the respondents are teachers of Hungarian as a mother tongue. 60% of them (34 out of 57) stated that they teach the topic of dialects within their subject (Figure 2). 40% of them highlighted that they do not have time for it because other topics are more important. In Hungary, other kinds of knowledge and competences are tested by the admission process to secondary grammar school from middle school and the school-leaving exam at the age of 18. The oral part of the school-leaving exam can include topics on dialects but since the topics are chosen by the teacher themselves (and not, say, an agency from the Government), it is usually omitted from the list. A higher level of school-leaving exam that is needed for some university training programs includes topics that are chosen centrally but questions of language variability are also overshadowed in general (cf. the website of the Hungarian Office for Education: https://www.oktatas.hu/ kozneveles/erettsegi/). As Figure 3 shows, 45 respondents answered that as a university student they studied Dialectology. It is also remarkable that one of them even cannot remember whether she learnt about the topic at the university or not. Dialectology and Sociolinguistics have been compulsory courses in Hungarian as first language teacher education programs for decades at Hungarian universities.
Sociolinguistics -that underpins the Dialectology course in most universities -is still needed in present-day trainings (Kiss, 2009(Kiss, , 2015. Most respondents have poor memories of their Dialectology course and some of the participants (not or not only Hungarian teachers) indicated the absence of practical help with their work (Table 4; for similar opinions of Hungarian as first language university students: Kiss, 2009).

Demands for handling and teaching about dialects
"It was a boring and unnecessary lecture, although I was interested in the topic" (female, 34, secondary, Hungarian) "Do the ones who speak this way as a child have orthographical difficulties?" (female, 41, secondary, English) "It was theoretical with less opportunities for observing" (male, 37, secondary, Hungarian) "It's a good topic that we barely deal with in the first years of middle school" (female, 42, middle, Maths) "It was boring. I didn't go on a fieldwork; I wrote a theoretical paper instead of it" (male, 38, secondary, Hungarian and History) "Developing educational material, designing electronic teaching material in this topic is needed" (female, 57, secondary, Hungarian) Table 4. Hungarian as first language teachers' expressions and demands on Dialectology.

Discussion and conclusions
The findings of the study answer the research questions that were addressed in Chapter 2. The hypotheses of teachers' (mis)beliefs about dialects are proven by the data of 170 respondents.
The results reveal the stereotypical thinking of most Hungarian teachers about regional dialects and dialect speakers (Q1) as it was also proved by a recent study of Jánk (2019) that investigated the connection between students' language use and their teachers' evaluation with the method of matched guise technique. The study investigates linguistic judgements with relation to dialects of half a thousand teachers and teacher-to-be university students. After the participants listened to oral exams in different varieties of Hungarian they had to evaluate them. Most of the subjects gave better grades to students with Standard language use and worse grades to students with dialect speech, even if dialect speakers presented the content with better quality than the Standard speakers.
According to the results of the present study, while only 12% of participants answered that acquiring a dialect is independent from age, settlement and education, categories of advanced age (59%), transborder (59%) and villager (68%) lifestyle reached significantly higher marking (more than one category could be chosen) (H1). Every single respondent regards dialects as a national treasure that should be used proudly, even if it is corrected as a bad form of language. As their answers and examples reveal, most of them cannot differentiate which language form is a consequence of regional variability and which is simply an incorrect grammar use (Q2 and H2).
In addition, nearly two thirds of the responding teachers of Hungarian as a mother tongue do not teach this topic at school (Q3). The result is not surprising in light of the participants' memories of the topic during their training: most of them did not have the chance to earn useful knowledge and good practices (Q4). The same problem of Hungarian as first language teaching was also reported by Berente et al. (2016), Boros (2010), Fodor (2003), Kiss (2009Kiss ( , 2010 and Streli (2007). However, more and more new publications of literature teaching actual facts on dialects, is now available to help teachers who graduated many decades ago and cannot easily change their approaches.
The results provide an explanation to negative mentality of the Hungarian society to dialect speech and to the ambivalence between theory and practice when a person faces a dialect speaker. Attitudes and behaviour cannot be taught in a theoretical way without setting an example. Teachers who have inaccurate or any knowledge about the variability of language can only perceive and regard regional language forms (not only phonemes but also syntactic features and . Teachers' attitudes towards regional dialects in Hungary. Didacticae,8,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77] dialect words) as mistakes. Numerous corrections of a student's language use are in contrast with the expectation of respecting language diversity and even with the theory of language variability.
Most students can only learn about one correct form of language use; Standard Hungarian, therefore, numerous corrections will be made by them as adults while listening to people from other dialect regions. Metalinguistic awareness should be developed in relation to dialects in Hungary and it has to begin with teachers, as there can be no true existence of Hungarian identity in Europe, which concerns millions of Hungarians, until regional dialects are appreciated enough (see also Benkő, 1990). As a responding teacher added: "I believe in faith that we teachers, can do a lot towards accepting dialect speech. I hope the time comes when the usage of a dialect won't be a shame even within a multinational corporation" (female, 43, secondary, Management).