engleski

Can legal protection save regional languages? The case of Low German

Low German (in northern Germany) belongs to those languages in Europe that are in imminent danger of being given up by their native speakers. The paper will report on the situation of this regional language with special attention to Western Westfalia (Westmünsterland), a region generally known as conservative with respect to language maintenance and language change. For this area the long coexistence of High and Low German could be described as a stable diglossia until the outbreak of World War II. Since then a decline of active Low German speakers has taken place which amounts to some 30% per generation. This has negative consequences for Low German as a regional language: Although its degree of “Ausbau” has reached a remarkable level during the last two or three decades (a growing literary production, use in religious services, TV and radio programs including news and talk shows, modern pop music etc.), and although it has been placed on the Charter for Regional and Minority Languages of the Council of Europe, this impressive cultural expansion and improvement of status is threatened to collapse in the near future because of the rapid decline in the number of their speakers which we are witnessing at present.

Low German, language shift, regional languages

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