South Tyrolean German

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Typically bilingual in South Tyrol with an officially prescribed but difficult to understand German translation.

South Tyrolean German is the variety of standard German written in South Tyrol and spoken in formal situations .

Since South Tyrolean standard German does not have the same degree of independent characteristics as is the case with Austrian or Swiss German , but is based on the standard language of Austria, with which it was firmly connected until 1918, it is considered a half-center of the pluricentric German language .

In many areas of daily life in South Tyrol the South Bavarian dialects dominate (see also Dialects in Tyrol ). A special feature of the South Tyrolean variety is the language contact with Italian, which has a great influence because of South Tyrol's political affiliation with Italy (as the official language and as the mother tongue of most Italian citizens). This results in numerous neologisms , but also interferences .

Linguistic factors

The situation of Germans in South Tyrol differs from that of neighboring countries and in a certain sense is similar to the role of dialect and the influence of Romansh in Switzerland:

  • Lack of urbanization: The majority of South Tyroleans live in villages and small towns, even in the only large city of Bolzano, the proportion of the German population is barely the size of a small town.
  • Liveliness of the dialect: In many areas of daily life the dialect dominates. According to surveys, teachers in schools use the standard language more than in the Austrian state of Tyrol, so that one can speak of a diglossia .
  • Distance to the written language: The standard German language is often perceived as foreign and deficits in linguistic expression even among high school students were identified on behalf of the South Tyrolean provincial government and others. a. proven by the DESI study.
  • Influence of the Italian official language: In many areas of everyday life, administrative employees without interpreting or translation training have to quickly translate Italian texts into German, which means that interference is inevitable, especially since there is hardly any time for extensive terminology work. a. the comparable expressions used in Austria, Germany or Switzerland are unknown in South Tyrol (see German-language texts on tax law or the filling out aids for tax returns, which remain incomprehensible for German-speakers without knowledge of the Italian original). Many of the neologisms and expressions created in a hurry and without care are easily adopted into everyday language and, thanks to the authority of the authority, are then considered correct or at least irreplaceable. So Italian continues to play the role of a superstrat that should not be underestimated in the autonomous South Tyrol .

Interference

Typical interferences from Italian can be:

  • lexical interferences: e.g. B. Identity card (according to Italian carta d'identità , see identity card / carte d'identité in Switzerland) instead of identity card, school manager (according to Italian dirigente scolastico) instead of headmaster (official name e.g. in Austria and Bavaria) or Director (everyday word for school principals in Austria and in some German federal states), neologisms such as regular role teachers (according to Italian insegnante di ruolo = civil servant - in Austria: pragmatized - teacher, at least with an open-ended service contract), whereby one can also speak of a specific feature here. Typical of South Tyrolean German are those official neologisms that are prescribed by terminological lists (published in the official gazette of the South Tyrolean provincial government) , that reveal themselves as literal translations and that do not appear to be justified as specifics . Example: In Italy, the execution of sentences (relief from detention, early release, etc.) falls within the domain of its own courts, the Tribunali di sorveglianza. Would be a real tangible specific before, so there would be no comparable institutions in German-speaking countries, could be the literal transmission monitoring court represented. In Germany, however, there are definitely equivalent institutions: the prison chambers . So would terminology correct translation of the Italian expression with Strafvollstreckungs- or -vollzugskammer , especially since the term monitoring court not only does not exist and is simply incomprehensible for South Tyrolean non-lawyers, but awakens in German-speaking general misconceptions when decide a surveillance court on supervision measures as Wiretapping. Hundreds of administrative terms were officially regulated in South Tyrol; the term terminological index for it. Elenco terminologico is itself an interference.
  • semantic interferences (meaning shifts): didactic activity (s) (after it. attività didattiche) next to the German word teaching in expressions such as: the repeat exams must be completed before the didactic activity begins, the didactic activity ends in mid-June - this is where the interference lies that didactically in standard German always refers to didactics, i.e. the science of teaching, and cannot be used synonymously with teaching ; Literature also in the sense of Latin-German teacher (after it. Materie letterarie); Application instead of the word application, which is the only possible word in Standard German : In today's standard German, application implies a free discretionary decision by the authority or an act of grace, is therefore only used in expressions such as request for grace - in South Tyrol, on the other hand, only request is used, even if the applicant has a legal claim enjoys on the requested and there is no discretion or act of grace: application for transfer (similar use of this word in some parts of Germany) etc.
  • syntactic interferences: often genitive attributes or long genitive attribute rows are encountered instead of compound words or prepositional expressions based on the example of the Italian di / della / ... expressions: z. B. the allocation of the positions of the second language teacher of the elementary school takes place: the allocation of positions for second language teachers (= German teachers in Italian-speaking schools) in elementary schools. Word formation in the public domain is also interspersed with Italianisms : with the fascist Italianization, especially in Bolzano, countless streets and squares were named after Italian cities ( via Trieste, via Venezia etc.), which were reproduced as Trieststrasse etc. after the autonomy came into force , which grossly contradicts the German word formation and the feeling for language. In some German regions a Adjective derivation would be necessary (example: Badische Street ), in general, would be a derivation on -er the only common education - from Altonaer Chaussee in Hamburg to the renaming in Innsbruck for political reasons (in memory of the lost South Tyrol Areas): Bozner Platz, Meraner Straße . In recent years, however, numerous incorrectly formed street names have been officially corrected according to the -er- pattern in Bolzano .
  • Phraseological / idiomatic interferences: typically South Tyrolean is the use of the preposition within, also with time points, although in standard German within can only be combined with time stretching (within two days, within five days), e.g. B: the request (= the application) must be submitted within October 31st, whereby the Italian construction: entro il 31 ottobre was incorrectly transferred.
  • phonetic interference: e.g. B. the pronunciation of the digraph <<qu>> as ku̯ as in Italian instead of kv as in standard German; Lanthaler suspects that this development, which only occurred after the Second World War, goes back to elementary school teachers who urged students in writing lessons that qu should not be written kw , although Italian would have only indirectly caused this change in pronunciation.

In addition, there are language forms in South Tyrolean German that cannot be explained as interference , but are nevertheless explained by the special situation of South Tyrolean . So is similar in Switzerland writing as relative mostly the obsolete in Germany, in the Middle Ages by Latin model (qui / quae / quod) introduced and the Duden is papierenes German called what / which / that used that but in spoken German in South Tyrol is hardly used, so it does not correspond to the natural expression. Certain words, invented for language policy reasons, such as the teacher commonly used in Switzerland (instead of teacher / teaching staff) are also used. An uncertainty characteristic of dialect speakers is often the reason for non-standard expressions such as B. Submission deadline with non-conventional jointing e instead deadline . Other aspects of South Tyrolean German are perceived by South Tyroleans as dialect and cannot be found in the written language, for example the pronoun sell / semm or verhaucht hell (presumably from the official language: < selbiger, selbigem ) instead of demonstrative , which many North Tyroleans perceive as the South Tyrolean password der / die / das, example: sell woas i nit for: «I don't know».

The adoption of Italian words (subject specifics or practical abbreviations such as targa for "license plate / vehicle number plate") and interjections ( Oschtia <it. Ostia; magari etc.) into everyday language, which do not suggest any deeper influence on the language system, was often overestimated and are often short-lived. In job advertisements, for example, the expression military-free (for Italian militesente) was often found , by which the group of applicants was restricted to men who had completed military service, but which disappeared just as quickly with the abolition of conscription. For South Tyrol, although not typical for German in South Tyrol, the opposite influence is also true. Italian inscriptions often do not correspond to the standard Italian language, common in Italy proper (cf. attendere prego in the sense of the German please wait! Instead of si prega di attendere or un attimo). Today many Italians are subject to v. a. outside of the city of Bolzano also assimilation to the (South) Tyroleans, ie German-speaking culture in South Tyrol, and often sending their children to German-speaking schools in order to secure them social connection and greater job opportunities.

See also

literature

  • Heidemaria Abfalterer: The South Tyrolean special vocabulary from a pluricentric point of view (Innsbruck contributions to cultural studies: Germanistic series 72). Innsbruck University Press, Innsbruck 2007, ISBN 978-3-901064-35-7 .
  • Antony Alcock: From Tragedy to Triumph: The German Language in South Tyrol 1922-2000 . In: Gabrielle Hogan-Brun: National Varieties of German outside Germany. A European Perspective. Peter Lang, Oxford et al. 2000, pp. 161-192. ISBN 978-3-035301175 .
  • Werner von Aufschnaiter: Special features of the German legal and official language in South Tyrol due to language contact. In: German reports. 16: 83-88 (1982).
  • Roland Bauer: German as the official language in South Tyrol. In: W. Osterheld (Ed.): Terminologie et tradition. Office des publications officielles des communautés europeénnes, Luxembourg 1994, pp. 63–84.
  • Kurt Egger : The variety of linguistic means of expression in the colloquial language of students in Bolzano. In: Diversity of German. Festschrift for Werner Besch. Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 1993, ISBN 3-631-45862-2 , pp. 653-663.
  • Kurt Egger, Franz Lanthaler (Hrsg.): The German language in South Tyrol: uniform language and regional diversity . Folio Verlag, Vienna / Bozen 2001, ISBN 3-85256-138-8 .
  • Kurt Egger: The changing language landscape: South Tyrol on the way to multilingualism . Athesia, Bozen 2001, ISBN 88-8266-112-1 .
  • Johannes Kramer: German and Italian in South Tyrol. Winter, Heidelberg 1981, ISBN 3-533-02985-9 .
  • Franz Lanthaler, Annemarie Saxalber: The German standard language in South Tyrol. In: Rudolf Muhr, Richard Schrodt, Peter Wiesinger (Ed.): Austrian German. Linguistic, social-psychological and language-political aspects of a national variant of German. Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna 1995, pp. 287-304.
  • Hans Moser, Oskar Putzer (ed.): On the situation of Germans in South Tyrol. Linguistic contributions to questions of language norm and language contact. Innsbruck Contributions to Cultural Studies - German Series, Volume 13. Innsbruck 1982, ISBN 3-85124-086-3 .
  • Karin Pernstich: The Italian influence on the German language in South Tyrol, presented to the South Tyrolean press. Writings on the German language in Austria. Volume 11. Braumüller, Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-7003-0549-4 .
  • Gerhard Riedmann: The special features of the written German language in South Tyrol. Duden contributions 39th Bibliographical Institute, Mannheim 1972.
  • Gerhard Riedmann: Comments on the contemporary German language in South Tyrol. In: P. Sture Ureland (Ed.): Standard language and dialects in multilingual areas of Europe. Linguistic work, Volume 82. Tübingen 1979, ISBN 3-484-10373-6 .

Remarks

  1. ^ Nadia Auer and Verena Fauster (Forum Schule heute, undated, accessed on October 22, 2011): Standard language and dialect in class
  2. ↑ DESI was carried out together with the first regional evaluation of the PISA study in South Tyrol in 2003, albeit irregularly like PISA: a third of the (poor) students were excluded from participation from the outset and the entire English test part was canceled due to alleged disadvantage of the South Tyrolean students who learn Italian as their first foreign language were not carried out. The DESI South Tyrol result reads soberly: at the word field station all students failed, for example not a single one could name a signal box as such. Out of consideration for their official clients, the German test experts spoke benevolently of item bias and ignored the significant linguistic deficits - tasks in which South Tyrolean students performed poorly were excluded without further ado before the evaluation. Despite these beautiful factors, the result was clear: in the vocabulary test, only 14% of South Tyrolean high school students achieved the highest performance group, to which almost half (!) Of the fifteen-year-olds in Germany belong, conversely a quarter (!) Of South Tyrolean high school students were in the very worst group which, despite all the migration problems, only accounts for 7% in Germany. See the official final report of the German DESI project group on the homepage of the Pedagogical Institute for the German Language Group in Bolzano [1] . Result of the vocabulary test (22.6 vs. 7.6% in the worst group A, 44.2 vs. 14.2% in the best group C): p. 36; Exclusion from vocational training (= 30% !!): p. 7; Item bias: “buns” not known, p. 12; DIF analyzes (Differential Item Functioning), completely failed in Wortfeld Bahnhof, p. 17.
  3. ↑ http://www.beamten-informationen.de/versetzung_von_beamten
  4. ↑ Example in http://www.fachschule-laimburg.it/unsere-schule/formulare.asp
  5. ↑ Barbara Bachmann: At home with strangers - German-speaking South Tyrol is more self-confident than ever before. And the Italians? Taking stock of a minority in the minority. Die Zeit , March 30, 2015.