The vowel space of multiethnolectal (Stuttgart) German

Abstract

The emergence of multiethnolects, i.e. specific speaking styles or varieties associated with second and third generation speakers from immigrant backgrounds, has been observed and studied in several major cities in Europe and elsewhere in the world. The multiethnolect that is the focus of this study is one such variety of colloquial German. Most previous research on multiethnolectal German has focused on grammatical features. This paper reports on the first comprehensive study of the vowel system (vowel quality and global vowel space size) of multiethnolectal German, based on data from Stuttgart. The results show that the vowel space of multiethnolectal speakers is in generally more centralized than that of a comparison group. A more detailed analysis reveals that the linguistic background plays an important role, as speakers with a Turkish or South Slavonic language background are responsible for this effect.