Intralingual Varieties in Interlingual Contact (The Case of Migrant Russian in Germany)

What is it about?

The paper examines the evolution of the system of intralingual varieties of Russian in the context of migration-afected unbalanced multilingualism (Russian as a heritage language vs German as a language of ofcial communication).

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Why is it important?

As the analysis of sociolinguistic and linguistic data shows, interlingual contact also afects the system of Russian language varieties. The reduction of the original repertoire of intralingual varieties and the transfer of German interlingual varieties, i.e. the emergence of a new (mixed) system, is explained by the change in the sociolinguistic characteristics of the Russian language due to migration. An indicator of the emerging polylingual variation, including strati fcation, is the switching of the interlingual code instead of the intralingual code, a typical feature of the second generation in the diaspora.