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Gerhard Zimmermann: Sprachvielfalt – Sprachmischung – Sprachspiel. Historische und fiktionale Aspekte nationaler und dialektaler Mehrsprachigkeit

In several European states, the course of historical development has led to multiethnic and multilingual populations. In most cases, the different national languages and dialects existing within each set of political boundaries did not remain isolated from one another, but were subject to mutual interference through geographical contact, social choices and language mixing. To a considerable degree, the biographies of public figures offer quite interesting material on their encounters with and their responses to the various languages which they were required to use in the course of their lives. In a jocular mood, aiming at some humorous or ironical effect, some speakers may deliberately incorporate dialect variables in their usage. Fiction, another productive source, yields insights into the individual speech habits of particular literary figures, habits which often display contradictory features. Finally, the translator of foreign-language drama and fiction in which characters speak dialect is faced with the difficult task of transferring the original variety into an ‘adequate’ equivalent in the target language (e.g., English varieties into German). In his search for equivalents across the language boundary, he may select from the dialects of his native tongue, or he may even turn to idiosyncratic mixed types of speech.