Interfering Influence of Native German Dialects on the Language of Non-native Dialect Environment: Russian Speech of the German Bilinguals

Olga Baykova ,Vladimir Alexandrovich Banin ,Yilia Valeryevna Berezina ,Andrey V Kazakov ,Olga Nikolayevna Obukhova ,Viacheslav Onoshko

doi:10.20896/saci.v6i2.359

Abstract

The problem of interference is one of the most complex issues related to language interaction, so it is especially important to investigate its workings on the example of the language of Russian Germans in the Kirov region. The article realises the historical and linguocultural approaches to the study of the interrelationship between folk-colloquial speech and the traditional culture of Russian Germans, residing on the territory of the Kirov region. The authors present the results of an in-depth analysis of interference features in the Russian speech of German bilinguals under the influence of the German language and its dialects, namely, the phonetic, lexical and grammatical features that occur under the influence of interference with the German language. The Russian speech of German bilinguals is heterogeneous and varies from virtually without an accent to unnatural for Russian monolingual hearing. The interaction of the Russian and German languages in the speech of German bilinguals resulted in the increased invasion of the norms of one language system into the framework of another language. This leads to the so-called levelling of the interacting languages. In other words, we see the emergence of a third–intermediate system that does not coincide either with the German or Russian languages and performs in the bilingual consciousness an adaptive function to the environment language. This study contributes to German dialectology, enriching both the theory and typology of island dialects, which retain archaic features and the theory and practice of scientifically grounded language policy and language preservation.

Highlights

The term "interference” is used in linguistic literature to refer to changes that occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of the interaction of various language systems (Weinreich, 2000)
Some of the observations presented in this paper provide an example of the fact that the native German language of Russian Germans influences the Russian language, which they mastered in changed social conditions
The principal objective of the study is the Russian speech of the Russian Germans, who were deported in the 1940s to the northern parts of the Kirov region and who live in the villages of Sozimsky and Chernigovsky in Verkhnekamsky district of the given region.To retrieve first-hand information, we had recorded 50 hours of speech of the Russian Germans living in the Kirov region

Summary

Introduction

The term "interference” is used in linguistic literature to refer to changes that occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of the interaction of various language systems (Weinreich, 2000). It should be noted that a cognitive approach is used for the analysis of language interaction and the specific features of the functioning of language units under bilingualism, which leads to linguistic interference in the language as a system. U. Weinreich’s description still serves as a classical definition of interference as “those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language” The interaction of the Russian and German languages in the speech of German bilinguals results in the increasing invasion of the rules of one language system into the framework of the other, bringing about the socalled levelling of the interacting languages (cf. Serzhanova2006, pp. 195; Gardner-Chloros 1997;Myers-Scotton 1995; Poplack 1990; Rampton 1998; Shastri, Pratima Dave 2010; Becker 2006; Erofeeva 2010)

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Conclusion