No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
The article deals with German-speaking minorities in Latin America, in particular the Plautdietsch- speaking Mennonites and the Hunsricker in southern Brazil and surrounding territories. It focuses on aspects of the communicative networks of speakers at various locations, in particular on long-distance written communication and its role in the spread of linguistic innovations. Using examples from earlier studies and current research projects (ALMA-H linguistic atlas), it aims to demonstrate that in both the Hunsricker and Mennonite language islands a superregional, even international communication network, which makes virtually no reference to the standard German norm of the country of origin, has arisen. Linguistic levelling processes within these two networks also occur within the written medium, through which both borrowings from the contact languages and neologisms are spread. In our opinion, the unique spatial and communicative circumstances found in these linguistic communities justify the use of the term language achipelago (“Spracharchipel”), rather than language island (“Sprachinsel”), which we reserve for solitary and isolated linguistic communities. One of the characteristics of the German-speaking language achipelagos in Latin America is an emphasis on oral (a domain in which dialect is dominant) rather than written communication, which, as we show with examples, also includes dialectal features and Romance elements from the contact languages while essentially remaining a standard German domain.
Loading…
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.