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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 501

Part of Session 179: Mutual intelligibility of closely related languages in a multilingual Europe (Other abstracts in this session)

Mutual intelligibility of Dutch-German cognates by children

Authors: Gooskens, Charlotte (1); van Heuven, Vincent J. (2); van Bezooijen, Renee (1)
Submitted by: Gooskens, Charlotte (RUG, Netherlands, The)

Several studies (e.g. Ház 2005) have revealed an asymmetric relationship in the mutual intelligibility of Dutch and German. German has been found to be easier to understand for Dutch listeners than Dutch for German listeners. This finding has been attributed to the fact that German is an obligatory subject in Dutch secondary school and that many Dutch people watch German television, especially in the eastern part of the Netherlands. In contrast, it is much less common for German children to learn Dutch at school and for German people to watch Dutch television. On the basis of the research to date it cannot be excluded, however, that in addition to the extralinguistic factor of language contact, linguistic factors also play a role in the asymmetric mutual intelligibility between German and Dutch. This is the topic of the present study. Specifically, we aimed at gaining insight into the phonetic-phonological factors playing a role in Dutch-German intelligibility at the word level for speakers of the respective languages in a first confrontation (i.e. assuming no prior language contact).

We presented 40 highly frequent Dutch and German cognate nouns, recorded by a perfect bilingual speaker, to Dutch and German children between 9 and 12 years in a word translation task. The German and Dutch children were comparable in that they did not know the other language or a related dialect and in that all expressed equally positive attitudes towards the other language, its speakers and the country. It was thus ensured that the two main extra-linguistic factors which have been postulated to influence the intelligibility of a related language, namely language contact and language attitude, could not play a role in the present study.

Our results revealed that cross-linguistic intelligibility between Dutch and German is asymmetric. The Dutch subjects were significantly better at understanding the German cognates (50.2% correct translations) than the German subjects were at understanding the Dutch cognates (41.9%). Also, there were more cognate pairs where the Dutch subjects performed better (21) than the other way around (14) and the size of the asymmetry was generally larger for the Dutch subjects than for the German subjects. Since the relevant extra-linguistic factors had been excluded, the asymmetry must have a linguistic basis. We will present examples of asymmetries at the sound level and discuss the role of neighbours (lexical competitors) in the two languages.

Reference:

Ház, Éva. 2005. Deutsche und Niederländer. Untersuchungen zur Möglichkeit einer unmittelbaren Verständigung [Germans and Dutchmen. Investigations of the possibility of immediate understanding]. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač (Philologia 68).