Modern Urban Multiethnolects of Germanic Languages

Modern Urban Multiethnolects of Germanic languages refer to diverse ways of speaking Germanic languages in multilingual environments, typically found in major cities like Berlin, Utrecht, and Oslo. While European cities have historically been multilingual, post–World War II immigration has created new linguistic contact zones, providing the context for the emergence of novel speech practices, particularly among young people. Researchers have investigated these practices and identified several linguistically characteristic features. Notably, some of these features exhibit parallels across Germanic-speaking countries. For instance, research has documented systematic variation in the syntactic verb second constraint (V2), variation in the use of grammatical gender marking, the use of loanwords from languages such as Turkish and Arabic, and not least nonstandard ways of pronouncing the local languages including both supra-segmental (such as tone, stress pattern, and intonation) and segmental phonological features. While some studies on multiethnolects have focused on documenting such grammatical and phonetic features, other studies have explored socio-pragmatic functions and social practices associated with the emergence of multiethnolects. Different scholarly approaches intersect, with some studies combining perspectives in both structural and social practices. Other studies again have examined the extent to which the new multiethnolectal ways of speaking correlate with local dialect variation. In some urban areas, speakers integrate features from both multiethnolects and local dialects. In other contexts, multiethnolects remain distinct, resisting assimilation into existing dialect variation. Altogether, the broad range of studies, and their different approaches and foci, not only underscores the complexity of multiethnolectal variation, but also the fact that multiethnolects are by nature highly dynamic and fluid.