German dialects of the Tomsk and Novosibirsk regions (based on the open online archive of German dialects in Siberia)

The paper interprets the data from the open online archive of German dialects (https:// www.tomdeutsche.ru/dialects/). This work was started ten years ago in Tomsk by Prof. Z. M. Bogoslovskaya and her students. The archive provides the records of the native dialects and folklore of Russian Germans whose speech originates from different mother tongues and has different degrees of preservation. Archival materials were collected on the territory of Tomsk and Novosibirsk regions during linguistic expeditions of recent years. Many dialects of the upper German and middle German types appear to be mixed, containing (primarily in phonological terms) the features of different dialect systems, mixed as early as last century. These are secondary language formations that are exclusively spoken by older people. It is not the case in the German-Mennonite dialect (Plautdietsch), which is based on the Low German language substrate. This dialect has a higher degree of preservation and is spoken not only by older people but also by young people and children. The genre component of the collected samples of folklore and religious practices does not show much diversity. The archive contains only a few samples of songs, ditties, and jokes that old speakers can still perform in their native dialect. A special role is played by literary German - it is the language of liturgical practices, of prayers and spiritual singing. The paper presents a number of dialect material transcriptions.

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