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What happens to people and to their languages when they come into contact with each other? This module explores this question in the context of the languages and peoples of the Danube region, focusing on German, Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and Croatian, and Yiddish. These languages belong to two genealogically different groups (Indo-European and Uralic) and one (Yiddish) bears traces of a third group (Semitic); within Indo-European, three different sub-groups are represented (Germanic, Romance, Slavonic). The module will use data from these languages (texts in the original, idioms, proverbs, jokes, etc.) to explore language and cultural contact from both a purely linguistic perspective (language relatedness v. typological features of languages, script v. sounds, areal connections, borrowing of words, idioms, and figures of speech) and a sociolinguistic point of view (intercultural exchange, multilingualism, standardisation, purism, and the relation between language and identity). It will explore how Danubian languages both converge and differ, how Danubian culture is both intercultural friction and intercultural flow.

Defining questions of the module include:

- In which way are languages along the Danube likely to borrow from each other and why?

- What are these languages like and what are their shared features despite their typological differences?

- What are the underlying socio-cultural reasons for using particular idioms, ethnonyms, jokes, metaphors, and script?

- How do people assert differences through language and how is similarity of culture imprinted on language?

The module is an introduction not only to talk about language but also to experiment in the languages that the course explores! By analysing authentic material, you will develop an introductory knowledge of the five languages as well as linguistic methods.