Use of language in Austria
| State language | Number of speakers |
|---|---|
| German | 7,115,780 |
| Recognized minority languages | Number of speakers |
| Hungarian | 40,583 |
| Slovenian | 24,855 |
| Burgenland Croatian | 19,412 |
| Czech | 17,742 |
| Slovak | 10,234 |
| Romani | 6,273 |
| Austrian sign language | 9,000 |
| Selected other languages | Number of speakers |
| Turkish | 183,445 |
| Serbian | 177,320 |
| Croatian | 131,307 |
| English | 58,582 |
| Bosnian | 34,857 |
| Polish | 30,598 |
| Albanian | 28,212 |
| Italian | 10,742 |
| French | 10.190 |
| Macedonian | 5,145 |
| Greek ( New ) | 3,098 |
| Kurdish | 2.133 |
| Windisch | 568 |
|
1. Indicated colloquial language of the Austrian resident population. According to minority representatives, this fact leads to an underestimation of the real number of language members. 2. Source: Census 2001 |
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The use of language in Austria is diverse. German dominates in Austria and is enshrined in the Federal Constitutional Law (B-VG) as the official state language . The native minority languages are also recognized in the federal constitution. Immigrants brought numerous other languages to Austria. The official written language used in authorities and schools is Austrian German .
German
State language
The first paragraph of Article 8 of the Federal Constitutional Law reads:
- "(1) The German language is, without prejudice to the rights granted to linguistic minorities by federal law, the state language of the republic."
About 88 percent of the Austrian population and 98 percent of Austrian citizens have German as their mother tongue .
The Austrian German is actually spoken and written in Austria , a high-level national standard variety of the pluricentric German language, whereby Austrian German differs from its use in Germany or Switzerland in particular in terms of vocabulary and pronunciation, but also in grammatical peculiarities. The Austrian dictionary , in which the vocabulary is summarized, was initiated by the Ministry of Education in 1951 and has been an official set of rules above the Duden since then .
Dialects
The German language is often spoken in the form of one of the many Upper German dialects . Bavarian is spoken in all federal states with the exception of Vorarlberg. Seven million Austrians speak a Central or South Bavarian dialect or a colloquial language influenced by these dialects. Since the Austrian state border is not a historically evolved language border, the southern German dialects spoken in Austria have many linguistic peculiarities in common with the dialects in Bavaria , Baden-Württemberg and eastern Switzerland ( dialect continuum ).
In Eastern Austria there is a smooth transition between dialect and standard language, i.e. H. the dialect is not strictly limited to informal situations. The dialectal vocabulary is recorded and described in the dictionary of Bavarian dialects in Austria . For a detailed description of the Bavarian dialects in Austria see the main article Bavarian language .
In contrast to the rest of Austria, Alemannic dialects are spoken in Vorarlberg and in parts of Tyrol's Ausserfern region. The vocabulary of the Vorarlberg dialects is described in the Vorarlberg dictionary , the linguistic geography of the dialects in Vorarlberg and Tyrol in the Vorarlberg language atlas .
In addition to the many different local dialects, which are mostly only spoken by the older villagers in their pure form , regional "state dialects" have formed in the individual federal states , which are based on the dialect spoken in the respective state capital . The colloquial language in the provincial capitals is influenced to a different extent by the Viennese dialect . This creates a mixture of Middle Bavarian and South Bavarian dialect forms with special Viennese and high-level language features.
The different dialects are the everyday language for a large part of the population . In the language used by older people there are usually more dialect expressions than in the language used by the younger generations; more dialect is spoken in the country than in the cities. In some larger cities, a peculiarity of the dialect spoken in the area develops. This makes do with fewer special dialect expressions (e.g. “always” is said instead of “ollawei”, or simply “pot” instead of “Tügi” / “crucible”) and instead uses more dialect forms of the more sophisticated language (e.g. . "Hintn" instead of "dreant" for "behind", or "in between" / "catch" instead of "daglaunga" / "attain" for "reach an object").
What is particularly noticeable is the displacement of the primitive dialect in and around Vienna, where a special “sophisticated Viennese dialect” has developed. It is characterized, among other things, by the fact that the vowel "a" is not pronounced as "å" or "o", as is otherwise common in Bavarian dialects. In general, words are pronounced much more often according to the script: “I, you, me” are also spoken that way and not as “i, di, mi”, or “net” is replaced by “not”.
Influences on Austrian German
Due to the inclusion of other language areas in the state structure of the Habsburg multi-ethnic empire , numerous loanwords and idioms from Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Yiddish, South Slavic, etc. have been adopted into the German language, sometimes in verbal horny form.
Lately colloquial language has been interwoven with words from the German media; In all parts of the country, words like goodbye , great , or the word delicious etc. have found their way into the country. The tomato is already considered to be of higher quality than the tomatoes, and the cream has almost completely displaced cream in Tyrol. The mass media reinforce this by using expressions like before , on site , etc.
In addition to these developments, the Austrian economy also plays a role, where, for example, individual brand names have become Austrianisms . Today the brand name TIXO is mostly used for adhesive tape , Soletti for snacks , Swedish bombs for chocolate kisses , Kelomat for pressure cookers and sometimes Allibert for bathroom cabinets , Wettex for cleaning rags , Cappy for orange juice and Obi for apple juice , regardless of the actual manufacturer.
Recognized minority languages
In addition to the German state language, the languages of some linguistic minorities are also legally protected in Austria . The autochthonous minorities include the Burgenland Croats and Burgenland Hungarians , the Carinthian Slovenes , Slovaks and Czechs (see Czechs in Vienna ) and Roma .
The second paragraph of Art. 8 B-VG reads:
- “(2) The republic (federal, state and local governments) is committed to its growing linguistic and cultural diversity, which is expressed in the autochthonous ethnic groups. Language and culture, existence and preservation of these ethnic groups are to be respected, secured and promoted. "
Burgenland-Croatian , Romani (language of the Roma), Slovak , Slovenian , Czech and Hungarian are the legally protected languages of autochthonous minorities in Austria. In certain regions, the long-established ethnic groups are entitled to native-language school instruction and official communication.
In addition, according to Art. 8, Paragraph 3, Austrian sign language is a recognized minority language:
- “(3) The Austrian sign language is recognized as an independent language. The details determine the laws. "
Other languages
Other minority languages and idioms of autochthonous groups in Austria were not protected by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , for example Jenisch and Windisch . "Windisch" was originally the German word for a number of Slavic languages. Especially in Carinthia and Styria it became a term for the Slovene local dialects interspersed with numerous words from the German educational language.
A large number of speakers of other languages, especially Turkish and the languages of the former Yugoslavia , some of whom are also Austrian citizens, have their center of life in Austria, but their languages are not subject to minority protection law and therefore do not have to be taken into account in schools become. In addition, extremely rare languages are used in Austria, such as B. Aramaic , which is spoken by the Christian Assyrians ( Suryoye ) (mainly by the diaspora community in Vienna).
Web links
- Entry on language use in Austria in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
- Population with Austrian citizenship by colloquial language since 1971 , Statistics Austria (PDF file; 41 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ 03/31/2012 at 5:13 pm by Duygu Özkan: The Christian Assyrians in Vienna. March 31, 2012, accessed April 11, 2020 .