Dialect or standard? That is not the question: revitalisation of the German language in Central and Eastern Europe

Koloman BRENNER

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0618-793X

Abstract

Due to the favourable general development after 1945, German minorities in Western Europe are in a stable situation, while German minorities in Central and Eastern Europe have been trying to improve their situation since the political change in 1989. The main question of the article is whether the revitalisation of the German language and culture in these countries can be success[1]fully carried out? Necessary determinants of this process have been developed and a thesis has been formulated that regional standard varieties should be treated in this process as the target language, not as a substitute, but as a complementary variety to the more southern standard variety.

Keywords:

German language, minority, linguistic revitalisation, dialect, regional standard variety