SPRACHVERLUST UND SPRACHERHALT: CHANCEN DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHE IN RUMÄNIEN
Language Preservation and Language Loss: Chances of German in Romania

Summary/Abstract: The German language (dialect and standard) spoken in Transylvania for centuries has lost dramatically, within the last three decades, most of its speakers. But, on the other side, new speakers of German emerge. The occasions to use the German language in daily life decrease, but nevertheless, the germanophone cultural life is still lively. Really impressive is the attractiveness of the schools with education in German language for children from Romanian speaking families. The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Romania, the traditional church of the Transylvanian Saxons, conducts its cultic and cultural life mainly in German. A range of corporations from Germany are looking for German speaking employees for their subsidiaries in Romania. These and other determinators which influence the preservation or the loss of the German language in Romania are analyzed succinctly while additional reference is made to the specialized literature. This article is an attempt to give a short overview of the current linguistic condition by asking: what chances are there for the German language in Romania to persist?

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