Low German on campus? You can find it on every corner: "Schnack statt Chat" (chat instead of chat) is written on the new posters for the #SafeOnCampus campaign. German studies students can choose to specialise in Low German, and a large sign in the canteen greets hungry students with a "Moin moin".
It is not surprising that Marina Rohloff and Marina Frank immediately notice these Low German words. Low German - that's what the German linguists do for a living. Both are in their mid-20s and are researching Low German and Sater Frisian at the Institute for German Studies under Prof Dr Jörg Peters.
In contrast to most other languages, there is no standardised pronunciation and spelling for Low German. How well or badly someone "Platt schnackt" can hardly be measured objectively. "There are no standards for pronunciation, as it differs from region to region. What's more, the language is constantly changing and is increasingly influenced by High German," says Marina Rohloff.
Test subjects read aloud and tell stories
This is why she and her colleague are now looking for objective characteristics that can be used to measure how well someone speaks Low German. To do this, the doctoral students interviewed their test subjects - around 100 people from the East Frisian Krummhörn region - and had them read texts aloud and retell picture stories, among other things. The recorded speech data is analysed in terms of speaking speed, basic frequency and voice quality.
25-year-old Marina Frank grew up in Baden-Baden and studied in Marburg - the geographical distance to her East Frisian research region could hardly be greater. In her bachelor's and master's theses, she analysed Luxembourgish. "But the methods used in regional language research are the same," she says.
Research at the East Frisian living room table
What is clearly different, however, are the cultural customs. At the beginning of their research, Rohloff and Frank were surprised to suddenly find themselves sitting at a well-laid East Frisian living room table. It belonged to one of the interviewers that the two had recruited for their research project in Krummhörn. The researchers themselves would not have been able to conduct the interviews in Low German due to their own lack of language skills. The "temporary colleague", who speaks Low German, quickly extended her assignment to include catering for the guests from the University of Oldenburg and spoilt them with snacks, cake and, of course, East Frisian tea. "We had actually planned to just grab something quick from the bakery during the lunch break - but we weren't allowed to do that," says Rohloff with a laugh.
However, the start of Covid-19 also put an end to East Frisian hospitality. The interviews and speaking tasks suddenly had to take place online. Nevertheless, many of the almost 100 East Frisians between the ages of 15 and 87 remained in the research project and some of them had their children explain to them how they could answer their questions to the two doctoral students in Oldenburg via the Internet. "Many were happy about the change, especially during corona," says Frank. What's more, participating in the project was a real labour of love for some of them.
Low German as a first language is becoming increasingly rare
Their study is also something very special for the Oldenburg researchers. After all, people who learnt Low German as their first language are becoming increasingly rare. There are no longer any men or women who speak only Low German. This makes it all the more interesting for Frank and Rohloff to find out what significance this regional language has for the people who speak it as a first or second language.
They look for indications of language competence in the acoustic characteristics of the speech data of Low German speakers. The speed of speech, for example, provides information about how fluently someone speaks a language. The pitch in which someone speaks also depends on how confident the person is when speaking. In a foreign language, most people speak at a higher pitch because they are tense.
Researchers also want to learn "Platt" themselves
The project "Acoustic indicators of language dominance in bilingual speakers of High and Low German in East Frisia" will run until the middle of next year. By the time they hand in their results, the doctoral students want to be able to speak the language themselves. They have already completed their first lessons with the "PlattinO" app published by the Ostfriesische Landschaft and want to attend their colleague Frank Fokken's Low German language practice course in the winter semester 2021/22.
Although she was part of a Low German theatre group as a teenager in Schleswig-Holstein, Rohloff speaks the language just as little as her colleague from southern Germany. Nevertheless, she realises that the "Moin moin" on the canteen poster doesn't really fit. She has painstakingly got out of the habit of using the double moin, which is common in Schleswig-Holstein, in Oldenburg. "I kept having to listen to people saying 'Moin moin' was slang, and then there's a poster like that on campus," she says with a wink.
