Understanding Bavarian – Reacting in Standard German. Strategies for Developing Receptive Variety Competence for (Czech) Learners of German as a Foreign Language Cover Image

Bairisch verstehen – auf Hochdeutsch reagieren. Strategien zum Aufbau einer rezeptiven Varietätenkompetenz für (tschechische) DaF-Lerner
Understanding Bavarian – Reacting in Standard German. Strategies for Developing Receptive Variety Competence for (Czech) Learners of German as a Foreign Language

Author(s): Boris Blahak
Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Foreign languages learning, Translation Studies
Published by: Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Nakladatelství Karolinum
Keywords: Bavarian; standard German; receptive competence; variety; German as a foreign language

Summary/Abstract: Based on previous studies discussing the thematization of German dialects in lessons of German as a foreign language within and outside the German speaking countries, the article outlines a didactic concept for building receptive variety competence of Czech learners of German towards the diatopic varieties of German spoken in the Free State of Bavaria. Using the example of the North and Middle Bavarian dialects, it will be demonstrated how the Bavarian-Austrian loan vocabulary present in the Czech non-standard varieties can be used didactically to enable learners to overcome the phonetic distance between dialect and standard language, which is the main barrier to comprehension. In this respect, the learners’ inner multilingualism is used to differentiate their outer multilingualism. The current foreign German studies background to the concept is the establishment of interdisciplinary Bavarian Studies at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (2019) whose curriculum provides a more profound receptive study of the dialects of Bavaria.

  • Issue Year: 2022
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 41-65
  • Page Count: 25
  • Language: German