The term "trasyanka" refers to a hitherto largely unexplored form of "mixed" speech in Belarus, in which Belarusian and Russian elements and structures common to both languages alternate in short, rapid succession, i.e. also within individual sentences. The number of people who use them is certainly in the millions, with a total population of around 10,000,000. The state languages in Belarus are Belarusian and Russian, with the latter clearly dominating politically and socially despite the legal equality of the two languages. Trasyanka certainly emerged in the 60s and 70s of the last century, in times of industrialisation and massive urbanisation in Belarus, in a process of linguistic adaptation of Belarusian rural-urban migrants to Russian, which dominated in the cities. In the meantime, however, as a mixed variety for broad, rather apolitical masses, it could represent a "compromise solution" (equalising variety) in the Belarusian language dispute (Belarusian vs. Russian), which flared up particularly in the first half of the 1990s. At the same time, it could be a sign of neutrality (or at least non-interference) with regard to the problem correlating with the language dispute of Belarus as an independent state turning towards a united Europe or as a not necessarily independent state towards Russia or a general neutrality in the conflict between opposition and government.

The project pursues three core objectives: The first objective is the linguistic description of the mixed variety in its phonetic, grammatical (morphological and syntactic) and lexical structures. The qualitative-structural and quantitative "mixing ratio" of Belarusian, Russian and common as well as possibly Trasjanka-specific elements and structures is to be recorded, and the question of the so-called linguistic status and homogeneity or heterogeneity of the phenomenon in terms of region, generation, gender, social status, etc. is to be answered. The second aim is to evaluate Trasjanka from a linguistic-sociological point of view. The most important question here is whether trasyanka has the potential for identification and to what extent its use is an expression of a social, national or ethnic (or also "sub-national" / "sub-ethnic") identity and can "survive" as a result. The counter-hypothesis is to examine whether trasyanka can be regarded as a purely transitional phenomenon of the language shift of Belarusian society from Belarusian to Russian. The third aim is to compare Trasyanka with forms of mixed Galician-Castilian speech in Spanish Galicia, where there are many parallels both linguistically and structurally (contact between similar, related languages) and historically, politically and socially (dominated vs. dominant variety).

The project has an interdisciplinary character, with linguistic and sociological as well as eastern (Slavic) and western (Ibero-Romance) aspects, focussing on the eastern phenomenon of Trasyanka and Belarus. The main basis for the Slavic-linguistic part of the project is the recording of Trasjanka conversations as instances of an informal, oral variety in seven cities in Belarus (approx. 100 informants with several conversations each). These recordings are transcribed, the transcribed material is described linguistically in detail and stored in an indexed corpus (using database techniques), which enables qualitative and quantitative analyses. The basis for the linguistic-sociological part of the project is a broad-based informant survey (approx. 1,400 informants) in the same seven Belarusian cities in which the data for the linguistic part will be collected. The survey comprises a "closed" question part and an open interview part. The data will be analysed both linguistically (as in the linguistic part) and sociologically in order to correlate language attitudes (primarily from the questionnaire) with language behaviour (from the interview part). The Romance studies part will be largely based on the linguistic-sociological survey procedure. Five dissertations are planned at the end of the project.