Czech and German in Central Europe. Some remarks on German-Czech language contact in Austrian literature
Abstract
This article is a continuation of our previous paper (2019) which deals with German-Czech language contact in Central Europe. As the main focus of this paper is to discuss how Austrian literature is affected by the influence of Czech on German.
Due to the longstanding coexistence of both the Czech and German/Austrian ethnics, lots of German/Austrian loan-words became domesticated in the Czech. A significant language contact area in Central Europe is the contact area which is based on the former centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
From this contact area, a remarkable territory emerged in Vienna that was particularly affected by the influence of Czech on German. The Czech and German languages have existed side by side in the Czech lands for centuries.
Although there has been a high degree of inter-racial mixing at various stages in history, there was never any real harm done to the essence of either of the two languages. A fascinating aspect is the parallel changes in pronunciation in both languages, for example, in vowel sounds and dipthongs.
Today it is generally accepted that, to make these sound changes, both languages had to develop similar internal expectations and that these developed in parallel.