Soziolinguistische Determinanten der Danziger Stadtsprache
Sociolinguistic determinants of Gdańsk’s urban language

Summary/Abstract: This paper describes the pre-1945 language of the city of Gdańsk, which was a peripheral variety of Standard German. Gdańsk was the lingusitic Tower of Babel since its beginnings. Such a multilingual melting pot necessitated cooperation and acceptance for linguistic and cultural diversity, which led to linguistic accommodation and assimilation. A clash of various related and unrelated language systems created favourable conditions for the emergance and development of a language continuum (Danziger Missingsch), which with time became the characteristic colloquial urban language used by Gdańsk’s speech community. It was also used outside of the city borders as a way of demonstrating one’s belonging to Gdańsk’s cultural and language community.

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