Czech and German in the Central European language area

The Artes liberales Brunenses lecture series of honorary and external members of the MU Faculty of Science accepted the invitation of Univ. Prof. Mag. Dr. Stefan Michael Newerkla from the University of Vienna.

While isoglosses in dialectology differentiate certain dialectal zones, the occurrence of common linguistic and cultural phenomena defines certain areas of linguistic and cultural contact. One of several such areas can be roughly identified with the territory of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, by which we mean the so-called Central European linguistic area, consisting of Czech, Slovak, German and Hungarian as central languages and Polish, Slovenian, etc. as marginal languages. A sub-area can be clearly distinguished from this, which grows out of the influence of Czech on German in the catchment area of Vienna. In our lecture we will take a closer look at some contact phenomena in this area.

Stefan Michael Newerkla is an Austrian linguist, Slavist and philologist. He has been Professor of West Slavic Linguistics at the University of Vienna since 2004 and a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2018.