German dialects of Altai: recent expedition findings

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a linguistic expedition to the settlements of the German National Region in Altai. The German language dialectal forms identified can be attributed to the Low German and High German language areas. High German forms are of a mixed nature, including the dialects of both the Middle and South German types. Despite sharing common phonetic features, each of the Upper German dialects in Altai has its own set of features, with some features identified for the first time, for example, nasalization in the Kamyshi village dialect. All Middle German dialects are characterized by incomplete consonant movement and grammatical features. South German dialects also have some peculiarities: full movement of consonants, “hissing” consonant combinations, pronoun mer (we). The High German dialects of the Altai show the features of the original mother dialects and new features acquired due to mixing and leveling processes. A conclusion is made about the impossibility of identifying the dialectal forms precisely. The Low German language substratum is found to be represented by the dialects of the Mennonite Germans. The analysis of the linguistic features has found the speech of the Mennonite Plautdietsch speakers in Altai to be significantly similar to the speech of the Low German Mennonite dialect speakers of the Novosibirsk region. Also, some sociolinguistic components identified during a survey of speakers of different German language dialects were analyzed: self-identification, linguistic competence, attitude towards native dialect.