The compilation of the

Oldenburg Corpus of Belarusian-Russian Mixed Speech (OC-BRMS),

which forms part of the research project

Trasianka in Belarusian—a “mixed variety” as a product of the Belarusian-Russian linguistic contact. Language-based structure, sociological mechanisms of identification and language economics,

made possible by the Volkswagen Foundation (reference number: II/83 371) within the thematic funding area Unity amidst Variety? Intellectual Foundations and Requirements for an Enlarged Europe. Our thanks therefore go first and foremost to the Volkswagen Foundation.

Without the close cooperation of the Belarusian State University Minsk it would not have been possible to compile this corpus. First of all, our thanks go to Dr. S.M. Zaprudski from the Department of the History of the Belarusian Language, who, along with his students, compiled and transcribed the majority of the records. We would therefore also like to cordially thank all the students involved. Furthermore, we would like to thank the head of the department, Prof. Dr. M.R. Pryhodzič, as well as the Dean of the Faculty of Philology, Prof. Dr. I.S. Roŭda, who both benevolently supported the project along with other members of the faculty.

Special thanks are due to our late colleague in Minsk, F.A. Piskunoŭ, whose electronic version of the Vjaliki Sloŭnik Belaruskaj Movy (Minsk 2012) was a great help in the grammatical determination of word forms in the corpus, which contains highly colloquial speech.

And last but not least, we would like to thank the many co-workers and student assistants at the Institute of Slavonic Studies at the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, who were involved in various stages of the project.