Pedagogical Translanguaging to Create Sustainable Minority Language Practices in Kindergarten

Abstract

The coastal areas of Finnmark have deep Sámi roots. With the Norwegian assimilation policy—Norwegianization—the transition to the Norwegian language has been extensive here, placing the region outside Sámi core areas. Nevertheless, indigenous Sea Sámi identity still exists, and language vitalization and raising awareness of culture are shown in Sámi institution building. Within these frames, kindergarten teachers with Sámi backgrounds work to strengthen their local Sámi language and culture in a Sámi department of a kindergarten outside the core Sámi areas. This article aims to shed light on how the use of their bilingual resources in pedagogical translanguaging practices can build sustainable language practices for North Sámi. With children and adults, we explored how culturally aware, situated outdoors activities, such as building a campfire and gathering berries, encouraged children’s use of North Sámi. Both children and adults recorded these activities with GoPro cameras. The material was transcribed and analyzed using Conversation Analysis and translanguaging. For this article, I chose three episodes in which kindergarten teachers used their bilingual language register to interact with children in different pedagogical practices to give children input in North Sámi. Pedagogical translanguaging with young language learners in an emergent bilingual situation could help strengthen North Sámi language and culture outside Sámi core areas.

1. Introduction

Sustainability is an important issue for minoritized, indigenous, and threatened languages, including the three Sámi languages still spoken in Norway [1]. Sápmi is North Sámi for the nation and territory covering the northern and central parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, as well as the Kola peninsula of northwestern Russia. Along with other ethnic groups, Sámi peoples have populated these regions for thousands of years. Most of the Sámi live in Norway and are acknowledged as an indigenous people. There is no reliable or updated demographic data on the Sámi, but estimates on Ethnologue suggest that 40,000 Sámi live in Norway. Coastal areas of Finnmark have deep Sea Sámi and Highland Sámi roots; however, external factors threaten the sustainability of these groups’ language [2]. Via the national policy and process of Norwegianization, the transition to Norwegian language as the family language has been massive. This defines the community in which this kindergarten research took place as being outside Sámi core areas. Norwegian culture and language are all encompassing and part of everybody and every practice. It is a common experience in our region to be both Sámi and Norwegian, an experience I share. For many, this also imposes the feeling of being neither/nor. Despite the operation of colonial forces, the indigenous Sea Sámi identity prevails, and the strength of the people, vitalization of language and cultural awareness raising are seen in local Sámi institution building, such as the Sea Sámi Centre and Sámi kindergartens. New education systems are working to sustain Sámi language and reverse some of the effects of Norwegianization.

This article aims to shed light on how kindergarten teachers with Sámi backgrounds work inside these frames to strengthen Sámi language and culture in a Sámi department of a kindergarten outside Sámi core areas. I present an analysis of how they use their multilingual resources in different translanguaging practices to create sustainable language practices in interactions. Together with the children and adults of the kindergarten, we explored using technology, such as GoPro cameras, to encourage children’s use of Sámi words, and employed culturally aware, situated activities [3], such as building a campfire and gathering berries. Transcriptions are analyzed using Conversation Analysis (CA) [4,5] and the concept of translanguaging [6,7,8], which is connected to the sustainability of indigenous languages [9].

Translanguaging is a concept/term that has evolved and is evolving both within educational use and in the study of more spontaneous speech. In-depth discussions and historics can be found in García and Wei [6], Wei [7], Cenoz and Gorter [9,10], and Bastardas-Boada [11]. Auer [12] discusses the usefulness of the term compared with codeswitching. Departing from more rigid understandings of named languages and monolingual perspectives in earlier codeswitching, such as that put forward by Myers-Scotton [13,14], a more multilingual view of codeswitching practices has evolved, represented by such concepts as Gafarangas’ “talk in two languages” [15,16,17]. Translanguaging takes up postcolonial perspectives on language [18,19,20] and local practice as a third space [21,22]. In this article, I focus on translanguaging as a pedagogical practice in indigenous settings, in line with Cen Williams’ trasueithu [23], which was developed for pedagogical practices in a Welsh school [6]. For this article, I find Li Wei’s definition of translanguaging space interesting, highlighting Bhaba’s cultural translation and the creation of a social space: “The act of translanguaging then is transformative in nature; it creates a social space for the multilingual language user by bringing together different dimensions of their personal history, experience and environment, their attitude, belief and ideology, their cognitive and physical capacity into on coordinated and meaningful performance, and making it into a lived experience” [8].

Translanguaging is visible as practices of codeswitching and language alternation. It is the use of more than one language in interaction, the use of all the participants’ linguistic resources, and the local treatment of switching languages as less important than the interaction and the meaning making. It is easy to understand arguments on how minority languages are threatened by translanguaging or even bilingualism (all contact linguists remember Manx), as discussed from different angles in “Dangerous bilingualism” [24]. To learn a language, it is important to have enough input and enough arenas to use the language. However, the world does not always treat everybody the same way, and it is vital to work within the frames that are given (felt or real)—the social and community frames [25]. Work for minority language vitality [26,27,28,29,30,31] has pointed to language baths and nests, and the well-known idea of the “one speaker, one language” theory. Keskitalo, Määttä and Uusiautti [25] give a short overview of language immersion models, together with their model, “the language immersion tepee for the Sámi languages” [25,32], and Sámi language learning in school and daycare (kindergarten). They conclude by highlighting “flexible bilingualism” [33] as a useful strategy, and it is a valid conclusion when they also use more pragmatic approaches where language immersion is one of the means, but at the same time, note that “[f]lexible bilingualism emphasizes the overlapping of languages and language fluidity and movement, rather than enforcing separation of languages for learning and teaching. As participants engage in flexible bilingualism, the boundaries between languages become permeable” [25]. This is in line with translanguaging theories and gestures toward a postcolonial view of named languages [18].

Translanguaging sprang from threatened minority languages in educational settings, and the Welsh experiences seem familiar to Sámi outside core areas. Another minority situation that is similar in Europe is that of the Basque language. From the Basque situation, Cenoz and Gorter have developed a model for translanguaging as language sustainability in a minority context [9]. However, society does not easily accept combining elements of different languages [9]. The situation in my material is that of emergent bilingualism, and it is natural to be using resources from different languages, such as single words or expressions they master and are not in their target language or structures from their strongest language in a weaker one, such as using compound verb structure from Norwegian in Sámi instead of conjugating according to Sámi grammar. This all has explanation models within codeswitching, but the term translanguaging allows a greater focus on the practice. Cenoz and Gorter [9] propose five “guiding principles for sustainable translanguaging for regional minority languages.” The first principle is designing functional breathing spaces for using the minority language. This principle should ideally be monolingual and serve as sort of a protection. From Joshua Fishman, Cenoz & Gorter describes this as follows: “the idea is that the minority language can be used freely and without the threat of the majority language; it can “breathe”, in a space where only the minority [language] is spoken. Such a space could be a village, an area, a classroom or a school” [9]. Cenoz and Gorter [9] do not propose a rigid system like language immersion, and they meet practices put forward by, for example, García et al. [6,34] and Cummins [35]: “Even though this principle can be seen as linked to traditional practices of language isolation, it differs from these practices because schoolchildren will have breathing spaces along with pedagogical practices based on translanguaging as can be seen in the rest of the guiding principles” [9]. The second principle is developing the need to use minority language through translanguaging. If information or interesting activities demand knowledge of the minority language, then people will feel a need to use it. Cen Williams’ pedagogical use of translanguaging can be said to be part of this. The third principle is using emergent multilinguals’ language resources to reinforce all languages by developing metalinguistic awareness. Their fourth principle for sustainable translanguaging is enhancing language awareness; here, this means being aware of social status, functions and language practices, and the when and where of using the different languages [9]. The fifth and final principle is considering both the pedagogical planned translanguaging and the participants’ spontaneous translingual practices. Although the children seem to have some understanding of their identity as Sámi and Norwegian and they understand Sámi (to different extents), they still do not use Sámi spontaneously. In my material, the adults set themselves up as spontaneous translingual role models, where Sámi may be used as an integral element even though Norwegian is the dominant language.

Knowing the community and local practices is a basis for describing translanguaging. A monolingual situation has been an ideal, but like many ideals, it may feel unobtainable to some communities, and for Sámi kindergartens outside Sámi core areas. That is where translanguaging comes in as a tool for language sustainability. Otheguy, García and Reid [34] argue for how translanguaging can be a “smoother conceptual path” [34] than ideal traditional approaches like immersion in “the goal of protecting minoritized communities, their languages, and their learners and schools” [34]. Even when the kindergarten is Sámi, most language and Norwegianization is so present that children and adults engage in different kinds of spontaneous translanguaging [36,37,38,39]. There are only a few studies in Sámi and Norwegian translanguaging. My Ph.D. thesis on language alternation in role play in kindergarten [36] shows spontaneous or natural translanguaging; however, I used terms like codeswitching and language alternation. Two master’s theses also highlight different kinds of translanguaging in Sámi/Norwegian—Vilde Kvammen’s thesis about informal linguistic practices on Facebook, which uses the term codeswitching to describe the use of both North Sámi and Norwegian [40], and Kari Marlene Mulder’s science classroom case study of pupils’ use of North Sámi and Norwegian in conversations about scientific terms, using the term translanguaging to describe the practices [41].

The Sámi kindergartens in Norwegianized areas could be defined as a third space, a place where it is uncertain what the outcome will be; it is even unclear for the people in it what it is right now. Many stereotypes of Norwegian and Sámi will not fit—not linguistically or culturally, not in social interactions or when evoking identity. Being forced, or immerged, into some other identity or expectations may not be the right path. As an alternative, third space and translanguaging are discussed in [22]. Although Bhabha’s postcolonial term could also be used to describe this kindergarten, it could be limiting in that a third space is also liminal [42]. One highly important issue in minority language sustainability and (re)vitalization is how to sustain a language without fully mastering it. As I find in the translanguaging practices and will show in this article, this issue need not be framed as a shortcoming but instead can be interpreted as representing the strength it takes to find a way to sustain an indigenous minority language. Pennycook points to this dilemma: “Here [in the fiction that it is possible to count and preserve languages] the language ecologist orientation towards a liberal concept of diversity encounters its contradictory nemesis through a notion of language purity, since the preservationist and langue-realist orientation of language ecology may all too easily exclude the possibility of change, borrowing, hybridity and difference. Yet, if we are to do more than preserve the rare examples of standardized codes, we have to work with the very non-species-like fuzziness, changes, hybridities and peculiarities of languages” [19].

2. Materials and Methods

The material used in this article comprises transcripts from films by researchers, teachers and children taken during one fine outdoors day in kindergarten. The fieldwork is part of a collaborative project between the kindergarten and BARNkunne/KINDknow research center (HVL and UiT) supported by the Norwegian Research Council and Finnmark County. The aim of the larger project has been to support Sámi language and culture in the Sámi kindergarten and to build a child language corpus. We use participatory design, and the project has developed into a different subproject since December 2018, when we first started out. The leader of the kindergarten and the teachers wanted to make a “Porsanger model” for Sámi language and culture vitalization outside Sámi core areas. As I analyze the material through sociolinguistic and bilingualism lenses, I think they may be right: They already have a model—they have a praxis [19]. Their model shares the core ideas of the original trasueithu of Cen Williams [6,23], adapted to kindergarten practices and to their local indigenous culture. This article is a beginning to describe and consolidate their ideas and practices.

I have chosen examples from three episodes. Translanguaging can be described both as pedagogical/planned and spontaneous/natural. In the context of a kindergarten language stimulation/language milieu in a holistic approach, it is not always clear what is planned and what is spontaneous; the aim is to create a rich language environment. In this analysis, the aim is clearly to use as much Sámi as possible, but at the same time, relations, understanding, learning and interaction are at the forefront in any kindergarten practice. In the three episodes I use here to describe translanguaging practices, there are three different teachers (two teachers and one assistant) with different language backgrounds. The similarity is in how they use their language resources to convey Sámi and interactional practices.

The kindergarten has three departments, one designated Sámi with North Sámi–speaking staff and working according to plans for Sámi kindergartens. There are four adults, where two have an early childhood education (ECE) teacher background, one has relevant education from the high school level, and one completed her certificate of apprenticeship during the project. Jan Tommy, Anja, and Lill are all from a core Sámi area, whereas Anette is local. Only one of them has North Sámi as a first language—and only language up to school age (seven years old). The other three have varying experiences of both active and passive knowledge of North Sámi during their early years and up to the present. After discussing this with the teachers, we decided to keep their real names to acknowledge their work. The children also come from varying language backgrounds, some from monolingual Norwegian, some from a bilingual Norwegian/North Sámi, and some from Finnish/Norwegian families. All the children are also in some contact with North Sámi outside kindergarten, but for most, kindergarten is their main input in North Sámi. They speak little Sámi but seem to understand, and the teacher reports that they understand the daily routines in Sámi. The children speaking in the episodes I chose were from the preschool group. They were between four and five years old when we recorded. I have given them pseudonyms for anonymity.

For this article, I chose three episodes with different person constellations. The longest film, Circle Time, is 8.51 min. Participants are the ECE teachers Jan Tommy and Anette and the children of the preschool group—Piera, Inga, Morten, Henrik, Anna, Johan and Julie. The researchers, Carola and Anne, are sitting in the heather outside the circle of children. The main footage here is filmed by Anne with a handheld camera. Camera as Language Teacher is 1.10 min, filmed with a GoPro camera held by Lill, and after a while, Piera. Audible in the clip is teacher assistant Lill and the preschool children Piera and Morten. The researchers are not present. The third clip is Lighting Fire, Children’s Perspective, 2.06 min, filmed with a GoPro worn by Biret. However, the transcription has been enhanced by a video we call Lighting Fire, Adult Perspective, 2.16 min, filmed with Anne’s handheld camera. The ECE teachers Jan Tommy and Anette are present, together with the children Johan, Biret and Anna. Other children and adults are present or moving around during the episode. Researcher Myrstad is present filming; researcher Kleemann sits with some children a bit further away, within clear hearing range.

CA developed out of the work of Harvey Sacks. It examines languages as social action and takes this action to be systematically ordered and organized [43,44,45]. In this tradition, the method, organization, and analysis in this study follow the seminal article by Sacks, Schlegoff, and Jefferson titled “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation” [4]. This article argues that the material is important, requiring accurate transcriptions of “naturally occurring interactions.” The focus is on speech production and turn-taking organization as a system [4,44] with turn constructional and turn allocation component. These elements offer several choices in taking and allocating turns, involving “techniques” either to give the other participant(s) an opportunity to take a turn or to take a self-selected turn.

Auer (1984) is an early proponent of using principles of CA to analyze bilingualism and bilingual language practice, and more recent research has followed some of these principles [15,46] of “a model for turn-taking in conversation […] characterized as locally managed, party administered, interactionally controlled, and sensitive to recipient design” [4]. In this view and method of analysis, bilingual conversation is basically conversation, and the use of more than one language is another communicative code [47] or register variation [48]—which may also be described as translanguaging [6,7,34].

Transcriptions were made by Edit and the author in collaboration. The North Sámi parts were transcribed by the author with some advice and proofreading from proficient North Sámi speakers. Any errors are the author’s. The English translation is also the author’s. For this article, the original transcription codes were adapted and simplified by the author to enhance readability. I use orthographic punctuation, reproducing an exclamation or statement with exclamation sign or period. Nonverbal signs, such as laughing and change of tone of voice, are indicated in brackets, as in “(laughing)” or “(teaching tone).” Utterances are reproduced in accordance with the original transcription: Utterances in Norwegian are reproduced close to speech, that is, using child language and local varieties. Utterances in North Sámi are reproduced with standard orthography. These choices have been made to ensure transliterator readability. North Sámi is in bold to ease readability and understanding of language alternation in the English translation.

Ethics are important when interacting with others. This project broached special considerations on ethics and GoPro cameras, indigenous minorities and the Sámi, children in an institution/situation they have not chosen independently, and adults in their workplace. Ethics and GoPro is a new and relatively small field [49,50,51,52]. It can be discussed in terms of two areas—procedural and practical ethics [49]. The project was vetted through Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) procedures and approved (assessment reference 749891) and assessed from data plans at UiT. Practical ethics go beyond these procedures, and there are instances where one could need less rigid systems. The children and adults were informed that they had the power to decide whether they wanted to be filmed or not or if they wanted to film/use GoPro cameras. We also talked through and practiced taking off cameras when the children no longer wanted to use them or had to go to the bathroom. We worked with routines to ask permission to film other children. One of the affordances of using sturdy and robust action cameras is that we could shift our focus from handling and being careful with equipment to ethics and considerations for others. Researcher Carola Kleemann viewed and discussed the videos this article is based on with staff and parents one month after they were filmed, and all expressed positivity toward the content.

Too often, the issue of empowering the “objects” of research has been ignored in research on the Sámi [53,54,55], on children [56,57], and probably in general when we look at elitism and research [58]. I modeled my research methods on “the least adult role” [56] (p. 47) to create distance from the adult role of teacher or assistant in kindergarten. This means that I was not normative in my linguistic choices, and I tried to be less authoritative and avoid comforting or mediating in conflicts. I was open with the children on the aims and research interests I had. Including the adults’ participatory design has been important to me. I wanted us to do this project together, building trust and a safe environment for sharing ideas and practices. As part of that, I shared my Sámi ethnicity and personal story with the adults, building a relationship and trust that I would not do research on but with them. The personal story was inspired by a question I was asked while doing Ph.D. fieldwork in a Sámi kindergarten: One of the adults asked, “Are you Sámi?” At first, I did not know what to answer; I had no “yes” or “no” answer to that. I told them that I am Sámi, yes, and I am also not just Sámi. I speak some North Sámi, but I had to learn it as an adult, not as a family language.

3. Results: Spontaneous, Natural, Pedagogical, and Intended Translanguaging Kindergarten Practices

In this section, I give examples of how the teachers used translanguaging throughout certain episodes in a way that may be read as sustainable translanguaging. As they make room—a space—for Sámi, their translanguaging allows for metalinguistic awareness, as well as language awareness. Translanguaging may even help overcome their felt shortcomings in their language, develop both spontaneous/natural and pedagogical/planned translanguaging as examples, and create room for emerging bilingualism in North Sámi and Norwegian.

3.1. Camera as Language Teacher

Lill uses the camera to create a situation and reason to use Sámi. She uses both languages in a pedagogical way to explain to the children and to model what they should do and say. Acting as a role model for translanguaging and for creating a monolingual Sámi language arena, Lill finds a functional solution to creating a breathing space for Sámi. The first example (

Table 1. Camera as Language Teacher, utterances 1–6.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
1	Lill	I lag åsså hjelper dere hverandre. Se her. Så gjør vi sånn her. Gea.	Together and then you help each other. Look. This is how we do it. Look.
2	Lill	Mii dát lea?	What is that?
3	Morten	D er kopp	That is a cup.
4	Lill	Sámegillii: koh…	In Sámi: cu…
5	Morten	Kohppai.	Cup.
6	Lill	Kohppa. Buorre!	Cup. Good!

) is for establishing the situation.

Lill starts in Norwegian, explaining exactly what they should do and wanting them to work together on this mission (utterance 1). She then switches to Sámi. This is codeswitching between Norwegian and Sámi with a pedagogical purpose; here, the codeswitching takes place between sentences. Pedagogical translanguaging is shown in how Lill continues using Sámi to create a breathing space, to explicitly create an opportunity to use Sámi, giving the children the tools with questions and short answers and coaching them step by step to answer her questions independently in Sámi. She uses both languages, but right here she has a mission, and she corrects Morten when he answers in Norwegian, showing that he understands the communicative meaning of her utterance. The correction does not involve saying he is wrong but expanding into using Sámi. After she has switched to Sámi, she sticks to Sámi for a while, providing the children a model of how they can use the camera and how to speak. Morten shows that he is bilingual in that he understands Sámi, although he answers in Norwegian (utterance 3). Lill expands in utterance 4 by explicitly demanding the Sámi language, and in utterance 5, Morten produces a minimal response with one word repeating and finishing what Lill starts. This is a correct response in the situation with her teaching tone. Lill acknowledges and praises his achievement. In utterances 7 through 11, we see how Lill now has created a larger breathing space for Sámi, and there is an exchange in Sámi only in

Table 2. Camera as Language Teacher, utterances 7–11.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
7	Lill	Naba… naba… Mii dát lea? Diet lea muorra.	What about…what about… What is that? This one (The precise meaning in Sámi is “this one that is closer to me than you”; she is touching the tree) is a tree.
8	Piera	Muorra.	Tree.
9	Morten	Muorra.	Tree.
10	Lill	Naba duot? Mii lea? Ná dát lea sámegillii?	What about that over there? What is it? But what is it in Sámi?
11	Morten/Piera?	Joŋai.	Cranberries.

. The advances may seem small, from repeating the target word in Sámi to answering direct questions, but they are advances and exchanges that occur purely in the minority language.

The pedagogues work with both culture and language to create the breathing spaces. Lill is perhaps the most explicit in using the GoPro camera. The pedagogical translanguaging is used for modeling and instruction. When she has to explain, she switches back to Norwegian, like in

Table 3. Camera as Language Teacher, utterance 12.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
12	Lill	Buorre! Så tar dåkker den åsså går dåkker å filme d dåkker finner åsså sir dåkker ka d e. Hjelper dere hverandre.	Good! Then you take this and then you go filming what you find and then you say what it is. You should help each other.

, utterance 12, in a translanguaging practice where understanding is important in more complex sentences and meaning making.

The two boys, Morten and Piera, take off with the camera, searching the heather for berries. In the background (

Table 4. Camera as Language Teacher, utterance 13–20.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
13	Morten/Piera	Joŋai.	Cranberries.
14	Lill	(bakgrunn, uklart) så hjelper dere. Så finner dere (bakgrunn, uklart)	(background, not clear) then you help each other. Then you find (background, not clear)
15	Piera	Vi, vi vil bare finne bær.	We, we will just find berries.
16	Morten	Å å åsså viss vi finner litt…	A a and then if we find some…
17	Piera	(tydelig) Joŋai.	(Clear) Cranberries.
18	Morten	(tydelig) Joŋai.	(Clear) Cranberries.
19	Piera	Se her! Oi nu slutta dn. Oi no filma, no blei de filma!	Look here! Wow, now it stopped. Wow no filmed, now it was filmed!
20	Lill	Juo.	Yes.

), we hear Lill explaining in Norwegian what to film, and that it could be different things, as she has already shown them. Although they hear her, they want to do it their way; they are only interested in only. We see how they go from simply repeating “cranberries” in utterances 11 and 13 to taking control of what they want to do (utterances 15 and 16), and finally, using Sámi independently when they find cranberries (utterances 17 and 18).

Here, we find children’s agency in doing something they have a model for, but at the same time, can decide for themselves. They continue Lill’s teaching tone and pronounce the word for cranberries very clearly, both saying it aloud. Lill is an assistant, but she is intuitively using methods of repeating, giving the children time to try, encouraging, and serving as a role model. Maybe this is what Sámi pedagogy is also about, building on traditional ways of transferring knowledge and interacting between adults and children. It is clearly a long time before the children will use extensive spontaneous translanguaging or codeswitching/talk in two languages. However, using the camera as a language teacher is one way of making spaces for using the minority language.

Lill responds to the children’s initiatives in Norwegian, but at the same time, she tries to create a place where Sámi should be present. She encourages their actions; she adjusts her questions so that they will not be set up to be corrected. In utterance 2, she just asks and perhaps expects them to use Sámi right away. The children also adhere and show that they know the target word when they respond to her direct questions between utterances 7 and 10 in Sámi, utterances 8 and 9 as repetitions, and utterances 11 and 12. Accepting translanguaging practices, even when Sámi is the target, allows for an example for informal interaction to use as much Sámi as possible. These informal skills are not necessarily met in any social interaction for the children as they will be relatively monolingual Norwegian. The intense contact—a term from Cenoz and Gorter [9] referring to the language situation for Basque and Welsh—between Sámi and Norwegian has almost erased Sámi language in coastal areas; every little step to reclaim the language is moving forward.

3.2. Building a Campfire

In this episode, the teachers Jan Tommy and Anette are present with the five-year-old twins Johan and Anna; two-year-old Biret also comes, and Julie sits on a bench a bit further away, watching what goes on when they light the fire. Both Anette and Jan Tommy are trained ECE teachers and use Sámi as a family language, but not extensively. They are both a bit insecure about using Sámi in spontaneous conversation, which can be seen in their direct questions, but they use Sámi when they can. Activities around the fireplace are common in kindergartens in the north of Norway, and for many, it is a Sámi activity. This can be a Sámi breathing space, but it is also a spontaneous event, and the use of Sámi is not fixed or prepared for every utterance. Nevertheless, the teachers do use Sámi without flagging it. This episode shows how they use short, frequently occurring phrases in Sámi but largely speak Norwegian. The simple phrases are often imperatives: “come here,” “look at that,” and “wait a little.” These are phrases used frequently in kindergarten settings and in child-directed speech; using them in both Sámi and Norwegian creates a little variation in speech, and the speech acts can be said to be both in keeping with the imperatives used and the codeswitching of selecting Sámi. Repetitions and learning language like this represent emerging bilingualism.

Anette often repeats and confirms utterances in Sámi and Norwegian, supported by body language and other situational clues, while coaching Johan in lighting the fire. This evident in the four utterances in

Table 5. Lighting the Fire, utterances 1, 8, 13, and 38.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
1	Anette	Du må komme litt nærmere. Gea dát!	You have to come a little closer. Look there!
8	Anette	Boađe deike. Så tar du den. Gea dát! Åh! (laughing)	Come over here. Then you take his. Look at that! Oh! (laughing)
13	Anette	Og så ta forsiktig dit, da slukke den ikke. Åkei. Oktavel!	And take it carefully over there, then it will not extinguish. Ok. Once more!
38	Anette	Det lea. Å så slipper du den.	That’s it. And then you let it go.

from Lighting the Fire.

While Johan responds in Norwegian only, Anette is codeswitching in a manner that is familiar—repeating in a new language when the addressee does not respond, as when she coaches him to come closer. Jan Tommy and Anette also work together to expand the use of Sámi, mostly with the short utterances that they know well and use often, like in

Table 6. Lighting the Fire, utterances 22–24.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
22	Jan Tommy	Det vuorde veaha.	Then you wait a little.
23	Johan	Kanskje litt mere.	Maybe a little more.
24	Anette	Det vourde veaha. Neida.	Then you wait a little. No.

. Many everyday expressions are well known to any kindergartener, like being told to wait.

The repetitions of each other’s utterances in Sámi confirms the situation as Sámi, and it gives the children some input. This way of using the resources they have is better explained as translanguaging, where an understanding of the educational and social context is an important part of using the entire register. One integral part of their use of Sámi is how they often seek affirmation from each other on pronunciation and semantics. This can be seen in

Table 7. Lighting the Fire, utterances 39–46.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
39	Anette	Se, så skal dåkker rive næver. Va d beassi?	Look, then you should tear birch bark. Was it birch bark?
40	Anette	De va næver ijænn.	That was birch bark again.
41	Student	Loggut beassi.	To tear birch bark off.
42	Anette	Åsså hiver dåkker never på.	And then you toss birch bark onto.
43	Anette	Mii leat “loggut”?	What is “to tear off”?
44	Student	Ná gaikut (uhørbart) loggai go sáhtta beassi muoras	Well, to tear (inaudible) One tore off when one is to take birch bark from trees.
45	Anette	Åja.	Oh, yes.
46	Anna	Hei, du kan du si (Tydelig uttalt) bæ:ver?	Hey, can you say (Distinctly pronounced) beaver?

when Anette asks the student, who is studying at the Sámi University College to become a kindergarten teacher, if “beassi” is birch bark.

In this excerpt, Anette asks about a word that she used earlier correctly and with confidence. With other adults, and perhaps especially with the student who has Sámi as a home language and comes from a Sámi core area, she shows more insecurity. However, this develops into something more when the student volunteers a linguistic context to “beassi” with “loggut beassi” (English: “to tear birch bark”) in utterance 41, and in that way, expanding the learning situation. Anette seizes the opportunity and asks what this specialized term is, and she keeps the exchange in Sámi: “Mii leat ‘loggut’?” (“What is ‘to tear off’?” Norwegian: “Hva er ‘flekke’?”). This provides a space to learn a specialized expression, an exchange in Sámi that comprises enhancing language awareness, as well as metalinguistic awareness, in both the group of children and the adults. The student continues the exchange with the other adult in Sámi, explaining with near synonyms or more well-known and general terms. Norwegian has a specialized term for this as well, with “flekke,” but the student chooses to explain in Sámi.

An interesting metalinguistic incident shows how the praxis develops metalinguistic awareness when Anna is playing with Norwegian “never” and Sámi “beassi” and comes up with the word “bever,” meaning “beaver” in English. The short episode in

Table 8. Beaver is in Fact a Stone, utterances 1–7.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
1	Anna	(Tydelig uttalt) Bæver.	(Distinctly pronounced) Beaver.
2	Anette	(leende) Bæver. (tydelig uttalt) Beassi.	(Laughing) Beaver. (distinctly pronounced) Birch bark.
3	Anna & Johan	(tydelig uttalt) Bæver.	(distinctly pronounced) Beaver.
4	Anna	(ler)	(laughing)
5	Anette	Ja mii leat bæver? Dat lea (tydelig uttalt) ealli. D e et (tydelig uttalt) dyr.	And what is beaver? It is (distinctly pronounced) an animal. It is (distinctly pronounced) an animal.
6	Anna	Bæver e faktisk litt… e faktisk en stein.	Beaver is in fact some… is in fact a stone.
7	Anette	Stein lea (tydelig uttalt) geađgi.	Stone is (distinctly pronounced) stone.

(25 s) occurs a little while before the Lighting the Fire excerpt and shows how Anna plays with the teaching tone to spread her interpretation—and power of definition—to other children in utterance 46 above.

Playing with the sounds, with the words and with semantics, Anna is seizing power over definition. Although Anette is correcting her by repeating the target (Sámi “beassi”) and translating or providing Sámi vocabulary (“geađgi” for “stone”) and semantics (beaver as an animal), with the utterance repeated in both languages, they are still in a playful and informal setting. They work and play to “develop connections between cognates in different languages so as to develop vocabulary in the different languages” [9,59]. Anna’s phonological awareness and metalinguistic playfulness are inspired by the translanguaging in kindergarten, like her chanting of “muorjje” in Table 12 (Planned and spontaneous circle time, utterance 41 below).

3.3. Planned and Spontaneous Circle Time

The Circle Time video is a total of about 8 min long and is a planned teaching session. Circle time is a planned teaching session in a holistic kindergarten tradition. To prepare this, Jan Tommy has laminated photos of the children picking berries last year and photos illustrating the different kinds of berries and heather. The circle time is planned to end in a song they have practiced. Although a teaching tone is often prominent, it is also moving toward wondering and not giving exact answers [60]. In

Table 9. Planned and spontaneous circle time, utterances 5–14.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
5	Jan Tommy	Ok, sáhttat mii lohkat buorre iđit vel bourre beaivvi dál?	Ok, should we say good morning or good day now?
6	Anna	Hehehe (uhørbart) plukke (uhørbart)	Hahaha (inaudible) pick (inaudible)
7	Henrik	Buorre beaivvi.	Good day.
8	Piera	Buorre beavvi.	Good day.
9	Jan Tommy	Ja. Ná buorre iđit leat god morgen ja buorre beaivvi leat god dag. Maid mii áiggut lohkat?	Yes. Well, good morning is good morning and good day is good day. What should we say?
10	Julie	Buorre iđit. (Hviskende) God morgen	Good morning. (Whispering) Good morning.
11	Anna	(uhørbart)	(inaudible)
12	Jan Tommy	Leat go morgen dál?	Is it morning now?
13	Inga	Auue!	Ouch!
14	Jan Tommy	Leat buorre beaivvi odne dál. Ná mii leat dáppe muorjemeahcis. Muorjemeahcci. E d bærskog? Ja	It is good day today now. Well we are now in the berryforest. Berryforest. Is it berryforest? Yes.

, Jan Tommy starts out in a teaching tone [61] in his prepared theme on greetings (e.g., utterances 5, 7, and 12), and the berry forest (e.g., utterances 14, 16, and 22), before a question/theory from Julie (utterance 70) sparks more exploration and wondering. He has prepared material and questions, and he wants to start off defining this as a Sámi space by encouraging the children to say something he knows they can say in Sámi.

Jan Tommy uses Sámi to ask questions and to draw attention to the situation as a breathing space for the Sámi language. He wants the children not only to use phrases for greeting but also to understand the meaning and be able to choose the correct form. When we did the recording, it was about 10 in the morning, so it could be open for debate whether it was morning or day. Usually, buorre iđit is used when the children come to kindergarten, greeting both children and parents. The traditional answer is Ipmil atti (“if God gives” or “may God give”), but to many kindergartens, this feels archaic and too religious, so many use the modern, Norwegianized way of answering with the same phrase: buorre iđit [38]. Henrik and Piera answer in Sámi (utterance 7 and 8) and give the answer the teacher wants, but Jan Tommy wants everybody to answer, so he continues asking. Julie seems to understand the first answer as wrong, so she provides the other option, first in Sámi, then repeating in Norwegian when she gets no response from the teacher. Julie’s response shows that she understands both the Sámi and Norwegian phrases, with the repetition uttered to ensure that she is heard because she does not get immediate response from Jan Tommy. Jan Tommy then (utterance 12) uses the Norwegian “morgen” in his otherwise Sámi utterance, perhaps checking whether the children understand meaning of “iđit” separated from the phrase. To ensure understanding, to explain the Sámi word, he uses Norwegian, translanguaging with a pedagogical purpose.

When Jan Tommy asks, using both Sámi and Norwegian, whether it is morning, he seems to have made up his mind already, and he answers his own question in utterance 14. After that, he continues with the theme for circle time, which is berries and where they grow. Although he has prepared learning vocabulary and made material with laminated pictures of the children picking berries last year, he still grows insecure about using Sámi and seeks support from Anette, as she did in Lighting the Campfire. He switches to Norwegian when he goes “off script,” again using available resources and his and Anette’s preferred shared language. Their modus operandi is translanguaging, supporting each other in both languages.

Using Sámi places them not only in the berry forest but also in Sápmi. When it is clear what “muorjemeahcci” means, Piera repeats in Norwegian what Jan Tommy said in Sámi, as shown in

Table 10. Planned and Spontaneous Circle Time, utterances 14–15.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
14	Jan Tommy	Leat buorre beaivvi odne dál. Ná mii leat dáppe muorjemeahcis. Muorjemeahcci. E d bærskog? Ja	It is good day today now. Well we are now in the berryforest. Berryforest. Is it berryforest? Yes.
15	Piera	Vi e i bærskogen.	We are in the berryforest.

:

The meaning and intentional output of Jan Tommy’s utterance in Sámi, “Ná mii leat dáppe muorjemeachis” (utterance 14), is repeated by Piera (five years old) in Norwegian, “Vi e i bærskogen,” and this gives us a clue that he understands the main (or matrix) structure in Sámi but perhaps needed the confirmation and translation of the specialized content word “muorjemeahcci.” Jan Tommy’s use of the locative “muorjemeahcis” is the same as Piera’s prepositional phrase “i bærskogen” (English: “in the berryforest”). Piera’s repetition can be read as a confirmation of understanding and that the translingual practice brings about a context for discovering new words in both languages, a fine situation for developing metalinguistic awareness through translanguaging. Piera is from a bilingual Finnish/Norwegian home, and his linguistic background may enhance his understanding of different forms of words. Both teachers and children are emergent multilinguals, and translanguaging offers a method to use their resources to reinforce all languages.

During the first part of circle time, Jan Tommy speaks Sámi almost exclusively, using Norwegian to check understanding. This is classical pedagogical translanguaging. He accepts any language as an answer, as seen in

Table 11. Planned and Spontaneous Circle Time, utterances 16–23.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
16	Jan Tommy	Ja det… Makkar, makkar murjjiid leat go don gavnnat dál?	And so… What kind, what kind of berries have you found now?
17	Inga	Vi fant vi fant blåbær å e rø bær…	We found blueberries and red berries…
18	Jan Tommy	Naha	Ok
19	Inga	…tyttebær	…cranberries
20	Jan Tommy	Ja blåbær mii leat blåbær sámegillii?	And blueberries what is blueberries in Sámi language?
21	Piera	Sarrit	Blueberries
22	Henrik	Kallit	Blueberries (with ‘k’ for ‘s’ initially, and ‘l’ for ‘r’ in middle consonant)
23	Jan Tommy	Juo, gea dát leat sarrit oidnat go don Anna? Ja.	Yes, look at that. That is blueberries can you see Anna? Yes.

, giving room to content over the linguistic variety, but still asking for the key words in Sámi.

Inga answers only in Norwegian, with Jan Tommy accepting her use of the Norwegian term for cranberries (utterance 19), and moving on to another Sámi term, wanting the children to show that they know it. Piera and Henrik give the correct answer, but again it is minimal, one-word response. Moreover, when he continues to hold onto the plan for berries in

Table 12. Planned and Spontaneous Circle Time, utterances 40–46.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
40	Jan Tommy	Dán… Leat go don gavnnan dán? Leat go don? Joŋaid? Leat go don gavnnat joŋaid? Gii leat gavnnan joŋaid? Leat go don gavnnan j…	Those… Have you found those? Have you? Cranberries. Have you found cranberries? Who has found cranberries? Have you found c…
41	Anna	Jæ, jæ sa bare muorjje, muorjje, muorj… muorjje, muorjje, muorjje…	I, I just said berry, berry, berr… berry, berry, berry…
42	Piera	Joŋai	Cranberries
43	Julie	Mu	I (genitive/possessive in Sámi: ‘mine’)
44	Jan Tommy	Ná, áiggut geahččat. Nå ja don leat gavnnan.	Well let me see. Well, yes, you have found.
45	Anna	Mu	I
46	Inga	Æ fant et til Julie åsså.	I found one for Julie too.

, we see that the children are still interested, and they do respond, even in Sámi. In utterance 41, Anna is more playing with the sounds than participating in naming the berries; in utterance 42, Piera shows that he also knows the Sámi word for cranberries, and Julie brings in something new in utterance 43.

The repetitions in utterance 40 are typical of educational situations in kindergarten. Jan Tommy asks the same question in slightly different forms. Anna shows that she knows the word for berry in Sámi and plays with the sound in a kind of chanting manner. Julie uses Sámi to answer Jan Tommy, even in an oblique form, in utterance 43, and Anna echoes her in utterance 45. This is the only example of that in this material. They are eager to declare that they have both found cranberries, and Julie is clearly reading the situation as Sámi. The oblique form is interesting and a bit puzzling because it is a possessive, perhaps containing a meaning something like “my berries.” These are minimal responses in Sámi, but they show that the children understand, and they echo the intention/content of the words in the interaction, as in how Julie echoes the meaning “see” below.

The translanguaging practice allows for the kind of passive knowledge of Sámi we can see in

Table 13. Planned and Spontaneous Circle Time, utterances 51–52.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
51	Jan Tommy	Juo geaččat go don, Inga: Dán leat čáhppesmuorjjit.	Yes, can you see, Inga: There are crowberries.
52	Julie	Nå får du se en som ikke e most der.	Now you can see one that is not crushed there

. The teachers can provide a Sámi environment to some extent, with prepared material. Straying from the script demands more spontaneous translanguaging, and more knowledge of Sámi for the participants. Spontaneous translanguaging is harder when the content of the conversation is unexpected. In

Table 14. Planned and Spontaneous Circle Time, utterances 62–78.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
62	Piera	Hei, kor du fant den her?	Hey, where did you find this one?
63	Jan Tommy	Ja maid don leat gavnnan dál Piera? Gea dát! Mii dát leat? E d nån som vet? +w Lyng. Ja sámegillii leat: +w daŋas.	And what have you found now, Piera? Look at that! What is that? Does anyone know? Heather. And in Sámi it is: (slowly and clearly pronounced) heather.
64	Julie	å å du lyng lyng kan det vokse noen bær på men ikke %u	and and you heather heather it can grow some berries but not
65	Jan Tommy	Dat leat čáhppesmuorjjidaŋas, muhtto dat ii leat čáhppesmuorjji dáppe.	This is crowberryheather, but there are no crowberries on it.
66	Julie	No (engelsk)	No (English)
67	Jan Tommy	(leende) no (engelsk)	(laughing) no (English)
68	Anette	(leende) no (engelsk)	(laughing) no (English)
69	Jan Tommy	(leende) Manne? Koffør er det ikke čáhppesmuorjjit?	(laughing) Why? Why are there no crowberries?
70	Julie	Fordi vi/ fordi kanskje d ikke vokser på her åsså at ikke noen planter på. Trur æ.	Because we… Because maybe it does not grow here and so no one plants on it. I think/believe.
71	Jan Tommy	(lav tone, bekreftende, avventende) mhm	(low key, confirming, waiting/encouraging) Yes
72	Jan Tommy	Ja, kanskje dæm har glemt å plante čáhppesmuorjjit.	Yes, maybe they forgot to plant crowberries.
73	Julie	Ja, å bare glemte helt av seg å bare … pl… gjorde d på alt anna bær.	Yes, and just totally forgot themselves and just … pl… did it on all the other berries.
74	Jan Tommy	(bekreftende) Mm. Kæm e d som plante bæran, da?	(affirming) Yes. Who plants the berries then?
75	Julie	Vet ikke.	Don’t know
76	Henrik	Vet itte.	Don’t know. (replaces ‘k’ with ‘t’)
77	Julie	Pappan min plante mye ting unntatt bare jordbær men ikke andre.	My dad plants a lot of stuff except just strawberries but not other ones.

, we can follow how Jan Tommy switches from Sámi to Norwegian when they become more philosophical and explore the idea of who plants the wild berries.

The context becomes multilingual when Julie uses the English “no.” This is clearly not expected in the situation, as shown in how the teachers laugh and repeat it. However, they do not correct the utterance, and thus, accept it. Yet, this raises the question: What in the situation prompts Julie to choose English over Norwegian? Perhaps the understanding of the situation as “not-Norwegian” and that it is accepted to use one’s linguistic resources freely. Norwegian has the word “nei,” which corresponds with the English “no,” but Sámi uses verbs for denial—“ii leat” means something like “it is not” (Latin for “no”: “non est”). Julie’s use of “no” is accepted, although Jan Tommy laughs a little before repeating and acknowledging the meaning, the communicative intentions, and he continues in Sámi (utterance 69) as a direct response to Julie’s utterance. Julie again responds directly to his question in Norwegian (utterance 73). To add to the acceptance of her communicative intention, and perhaps to aid understanding in this spontaneous discourse, Jan Tommy switches to Norwegian in utterance 74.

Using pedagogical translanguaging gives the children an opportunity to speak Norwegian and still be in a Sámi environment. The communicative intention and the meaning making are more important in the interaction than an ideal monolingual immersion. In

Table 15. Planned and Spontaneous Circle Time, utterances 82–86.

No.	Name	Transcription	Translation
82	Jan Tommy	Juo. Muhtto gii plantet čáhppesmuorjjit, hm?	Yes. But who plants crowberries, huh?
83	Piera	Jæi fant en plante med čáhppesmuorji.	I found a plant with crowberries.
84	Jan Tommy	Don leat gavnnan daŋas ja čáhppesmuorjji.	You have found heather and crowberries.
86	Morten	Jæi fant å en (uklart: lyng) som va (Uklart: krøkebær) på.	I too found a (unclear: heather) which has (unclear: crowberries) on.
85	Jan Tommy	Hm, juo.	Hm, yes.

, the exchange between the teacher and the two boys illustrates how repetition and creating an environment where using one’s resources is allowed creates a Sámi linguistic environment, which is sustainable in the sense that the teachers can use their emergent bilingualism to aid the children’s emergent bilingualism—and none of them are silenced.

4. Discussion: Translanguaging Practices in a Sámi Kindergarten Department

Translanguaging can be described both as pedagogical/planned and spontaneous. For kindergarten language environments in a holistic approach, it is not always clear what is planned and what is spontaneous. The aim is to create a rich language environment. In this analysis, it is clear that the aim is to use as much Sámi as possible, but at the same time, relations, understanding, learning, and interaction are at the forefront in any kindergarten practice. In the examples I use to describe the translanguaging practices, there are three different teachers with different language backgrounds. The similarity among them is in how they use their language resources to convey Sámi and interactional practices.

Dividing translanguaging into pedagogical and spontaneous practices could indicate a relation to codeswitching. Educational or pedagogical translanguaging is used to understand how bilinguals use their languages in targeted codeswitching: They will treat languages as different codes in interactions, for example, switching to the target language to let the pupils/students hear the target language but still allowing the pupils/students to speak their first language. Codeswitching can also be used in translanguaging to explain in two different languages. Treating languages as different codes, the switching of language will have a purpose and a meaning that the recipient is meant to decode; it is meant to create a specific context. The teacher may engage in more involuntary (or relaxed) codeswitching in different kinds of learning contexts, but it must be expected that the recipients will understand the use of more than the target language or their strongest language as meaningful, as marked codeswitching, even if the teacher imitates spontaneous translanguaging. Translanguaging and codeswitching operate at the same time, and while codeswitching is an operationable way to describe different practices, translanguaging explains the mode. Translanguaging is harder to use as an analytical tool. Since García and Wei (2014) coined the term, Wei has developed it into a more practical theory [7]. Importantly, Wei points out, “Translanguaging has never intended to replace code-switching or any other term, although it challenges the code view of language” [7]. In codeswitching research, there has been plenty of challenge to the idea that named languages are codes in all multilingual settings, Wei being one of the researchers with a multilingual lens, Gafaranga [15,16,62] another.

In a bilingual society, there may be different kinds of bilingualism. There are many kinds of bilingualism in Sápmi. I have conducted fieldwork in two types of contexts. In my thesis, I described a balanced bilingualism where the children had bilingualism as a first language. This is not the case in the present material. Some children had bilingual households, but they were very young when we filmed. The children that appear in the examples I present here are bilingual in that they understand a lot of Sámi, but they produce little, and almost nothing spontaneously. While I could use theories describing unmarked codeswitching, bilingualism as one code, or codeswitching with or without language alternation in my thesis, to some degree every case of language alternation in this material is marked, voluntary, and a switch of codes. Whereas the children in my Ph.D. material could be oblivious to whether they were speaking Sámi or Norwegian in a heated argument, but always adhered to correct grammar, the children in this material seemed to attend to Sámi as “otherness” [15,16], or marked [14,43,63]. I have not analyzed grammatical codeswitching and language alternation in detail in this article. From the examples, a pattern of single-word loans and language alternation and switching/alternating between sentences may emerge. To describe what is going on in this material, translanguaging works better than codeswitching to explain how resources are used, are meant to be used, and encompass all linguistic resources with the aim of preserving a minority language.

Cenoz and Gorter’s five “guiding principles for sustainable translanguaging for regional minority languages” bring out the ideas sustaining a minority language and translanguaging in a pragmatic way. Designing functional breathing spaces should ideally be monolingual and be a sort of protected place. However, the breathing space is not like traditional immersion, completely without interference from the majority language. The kindergarten where I did fieldwork is not a space where only the minority language is spoken, but it is still a breathing space for Sámi language outside Sámi core areas. The development of Sámi kindergartens in general has provided such spaces, as I argue in my thesis on bilingual roleplay in North Sámi and Norwegian [36,37], but the situation in this kindergarten does not have a monolingual ideal, and a breathing space could be something else: “Even though this principle can be seen as linked to traditional practices of language isolation, it differs from these practices because schoolchildren will have breathing spaces along with pedagogical practices based on translanguaging as can be seen in the rest of the guiding principles” [9].

The pedagogical use of Sámi in kindergarten is storytelling, and the use of certain key terms from Sámi requires the children to know some Sámi. Teachers use both languages initially but then try to use the Sámi words for different situations. In bilingual situations, the choice to be monolingual must be prompted by something. In this kindergarten, the children rarely used any Sámi. We experimented with using the GoPro cameras as something to speak Sámi to, explaining things to the camera: Go film something and say it in Sámi. However, being rigid about these forced “breathing spaces” or needs could silence the children: They would choose not to use or speak to the camera if it was Sámi only. The ideal of the need to speak using Sámi was more pragmatically handled and taken down to play situations where the teachers would serve as translators and facilitators. Feeling the need to use even one more Sámi word is a victory.

The third and fourth principles are to use emergent multilinguals’ language resources to reinforce all languages by developing metalinguistic awareness and language awareness. In my material, the two kindergarten teachers were emergent bilinguals. They would often discuss language, translate terms, and openly express insecurity before they spoke Sámi. This constant pointing to form and meaning should lead to a higher level of metalinguistic awareness, and one of the children, Anna, would often use her knowledge of language to play with concepts. Translanguaging practices enhance language awareness, and we can see in the material that the children acknowledged that Sámi was the preferred language, and they tried to answer in Sámi. Being aware of social status, functions and language practices, and the when and where of using the different languages, can be shown in the quite unexpected use of the English “no” by Julie. The awareness of kindergarten practice as “not Norwegian” is awareness of language. The development of multilingual identities, the understanding that we can be both Sámi and Norwegian, is more of an issue with the adults. The adults’ continuing use of Sámi, even just in translingual episodes, confirms that Sámi identity was present even if they could not create a monolingual Sámi “breathing space.” The fifth and final principle involves both the pedagogical planned translanguaging and the participants’ spontaneous translingual practices. Although the children seemed to have some understanding of the situation as Sámi, and they comprehended Sámi to some extent, they still did not use Sámi spontaneously. In my material, the adults took responsibility for making spontaneous translingual models. We could see how this worked when Jan Tommy used Sámi with Norwegian grammar in the past tense in Sámi sentences or inserted Sámi words for objects and actions in Norwegian sentences. A sustainable practice in language contact situations could be to recognize and use minority language words and expressions in everyday majority language speech. The pedagogical translingual practices of the staff could contribute to providing the children with role models for spontaneous translingual practices where Sámi is not excluded from Norwegian language practices.