We are excited to introduce you to a research project closely related to SINA that investigates Swiss communities on the Northern Black sea coast. You can find more information about this project here: https://wp.unil.ch/sina/swiss-communities-on-the-northern-black-sea-coast/
Author: Anita Auer
An article by Ladina Knüsli on the language of Matthias Dürst’s diary (Glarus) has just been published!
The article “Sollte dies mein Geschreibsel meine theure Heymath erreichen”: Linguistic variation in the diary of a nineteenth-century Swiss German migrant” by Ladina Knüsli (UNIL) was published in the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 5/2 (2019; special issue on Historical heritage language ego-documents: From home, from away, and from below, edited by Joshua R. Brown, University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire)!
Abstract
Increasing migration from the nineteenth century onwards has led to the production of letters and travel diaries that allowed migrants to stay in touch with their home country. Taking the perspective of ‘language history from below’, this paper focuses on a Swiss variety of written German, as used in the diary of Matthias Dürst, and its status in relation to the standardization of written German, the local dialect, and the new majority language English. The study is couched in pre-immigration socio-economic and educational history. The paper systematically analyzes orthographic and morphosyntactic variation, as well as lexical use that are compared to the findings of Elspaß’s (2005. Sprachgeschichte von unten: Untersuchungen zum geschriebenen Alltagsdeutsch im 19. Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer) study on German migrant letters. As the results show, the text contains some influences of dialect, especially concerning diminutives and the lexicon. Moreover, the findings reveal a gradual exposure to English as the new majority language, thus settling within the focus of this special issue on Germanic languages in contact with English. The study of the diary proves once again how valuable ego-documents, and also heritage language ego-documents, are for the field of historical sociolinguistics.
Naomi Nagy and Jonathan Kasstan at the workshop “Entre Europe et Amérique du Nord: Regards croisés sur le francoprovençal”
Naomi Nagy and Jonathan Kasstan participated in the workshop “Entre Europe et Amérique du Nord: Regards croisés sur le francoprovençal” at the Centre d’Etudes Francoprovençales René Willien, Saint-Nicolas, Vallée d’Aoste on 11 November 2017.
Workshop details can be found here: http://www.centre-etudes-francoprovencales.eu/cef/index.cfm/actualites/conference-annuelle-2017-saint-nicolas-11-novembre-2017-entre-europe-et-amerique-du-nord-regards-croises-sur-le-francoprovencal.html
Video of presentation by Naomi Nagy: https://youtu.be/QOqcoclH6m0
Video of presentation by Jonathan Kasstan: https://youtu.be/ZZ4DTjqo2uY
The programme of the CUSO workshop “Methodological approaches to synchronic and diachronic heritage language data”, to take place at the Université de Lausanne on 16 and 17 February 2018, is now online!
Guido Seiler and Mark Louden were interviewed about Pennsylvania Dutch and Swiss German spoken in America for a Swissinfo article
Research findings by Guido Seiler and Mark Louden were presented in a Swissinfo article entitled ‘I recognise every word, but I have no idea what you’re saying’, which was published on 1 November 2017.
Anita Auer features in the SRF 2 radio programme “Kontext” on 27 October 2017 where she talks about dialect speakers in the diaspora.
You can listen to the radio programme here: https://www.srf.ch/sendungen/kontext/auswandererdialekte-spuren-der-migration
Talk by Anita Auer and Alexandra Derungs on “Preserving Swiss Dialect features in the diaspora: The case of New Glarus” on 13 October 2017 at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark).
Anita Auer and Alexandra Derungs have presented their recent research findings on “Preserving Swiss Dialect features in the diaspora: The case of New Glarus” at the Eighth Annual Workshop on Immigrant Languages in the Americas (WILA 8), which took place at the University of Copenhagen from 12-14 October 2017.
Talk by Guido Seiler about “Alemannisch im Kontakt: Konvergenz und Divergenz in der Sprachinsel des ‘Shwitzer’ (Indiana, USA)” in Freiburg/Breisgau (Germany).
Guido Seiler presented findings of his research on the language island of the “Shwitzer” at the 19. Arbeitstagung zur alemannischen Dialektologie, which took place at the University of Freiburg/Breisgau from 11-13 October 2017. The abstract of Guido’s talk can be downloaded here: http://paul.igl.uni-freiburg.de/alemtag2017/?Programm
Talk by Guido Seiler “On the Emergence of Grammar-Lexicon Mixed Languages: The Case of Amish Shwitzer” on 11 September 2017 at the SLE 2017 at the University of Zurich.
The abstract of the talk that Guido Seiler gave at the SLE 2017 can be found here: http://sle2017.eu/downloads/BOOK%20OF%20ABSTRACTS%20final.pdf
Anita Auer features in the SRF1 radio programme “Schnabelweid” on 7 September 2017 where she talks about the use of Swiss German and English in New Glarus, Wisconsin.
You can listen to the radio programme here: https://www.srf.ch/sendungen/schnabelweid/er-het-e-pfiife-gsmoukt