Currently, the process of globalization, intense intercultural contacts, changes in social structure, and internationalization of higher education influence inter-ethnic relations, ethnic identity, as well as language changes. These processes can be observed among the Russian-Germans living in the territory of the Kirov region. Their investigation started in 1999 and is currently going on. The relevance of the study is due to the significance of the linguistic interaction at the present stage of the German language development in Russia, where for decades the German language has been developing and changing in linguistic enclaves environment. In this regard, this paper aims to explore ethnic and linguistic identity of German bilinguals living in the environment of a foreign language, different dialect, or different confession in isolation from the main ethnic array. The leading methods in the study were sociodifferentiated analysis, as well as comparative and statistical methods used while correlating the dialect systems under review to other German dialectal systems, literary German language, as well as with the Russian language. In the study, we came to the conclusion that the priority layer in the structure of the ethnic identity of Russian Germans in the Kirov region includes the following distinctive features: common territory, language, religion, family life, folklore, crafts, norms of behavior, common historical destiny and common psychological makeup. The language of the German ethnic minority, who live in the territory of the Kirov region, is unique and peculiar. It is characterized, above all, by mixed dialects in a foreign language environment and by a variety of their existing forms of. The paper is of practical value to scholars dealing with the German island dialects.

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The problem of interference is one of the most complex issues related to language interaction, so it is especially important to investigate its workings on the example of the language of Russian Germans in the Kirov region. The article realises the historical and linguocultural approaches to the study of the interrelationship between folk-colloquial speech and the traditional culture of Russian Germans, residing on the territory of the Kirov region. The authors present the results of an in-depth analysis of interference features in the Russian speech of German bilinguals under the influence of the German language and its dialects, namely, the phonetic, lexical and grammatical features that occur under the influence of interference with the German language. The Russian speech of German bilinguals is heterogeneous and varies from "virtually without an accent" to "unnatural" for Russian monolingual hearing. The interaction of the Russian and German languages in the speech of German bilinguals resulted in the increased invasion of the norms of one language system into the framework of another language. This leads to the so-called levelling of the interacting languages. In other words, we see the emergence of a third-intermediate system that does not coincide either with the German or Russian languages and performs in the bilingual consciousness an adaptive function to the environment language. This study contributes to German dialectology, enriching both the theory and typology of island dialects, which retain archaic features and the theory and practice of scientifically grounded language policy and language preservation.