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Language and regionalism in Germany and Austria
Commuting is a factor in the decline of the local dialect also in Austria. Resch (1974) found that 47% of young people, aged 18-30, who commute to Vienna daily or weekly from the village of Gols in the easternmost state of Austria, Burgenland, use the Viennese diphthongs /ai/, /au/ or /oy/. Only 30% in this age group retain the phonological system of the local dialect. However, 70% of commuters over the age of 30 have kept the original dialect; 48% of skilled workers show the adaptation (cf. 32% who retain the phonology of local dialect); but only 9% of unskilled workers have changed to Viennese diphthongs. The adaptation to Viennese urban dialect is strongest among those whose first employment was in Vienna and those from ethnic minorities (Croatian or Hungarian) and occurs more among daily than weekly commuters. Compromise forms are very prevalent among weekly commuters of all ages. An additional reason for the decline of the local dialect could be the changes in family structure from the stable three-generation extended family to the more mobile nuclear family, which is less self-sufficient. Generally, the post-war decades have been a period of unprecedented mobility in Europe - often across regional or even national boundaries. Mobility was particularly strong in the early years of the Federal Republic because of the arrival of refugees from the GDR, 12 million expelled from the former German provinces east of the Oder-NeiBe Line and Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) from Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Many of them were resettled in rural areas of the Federal Republic, where vastly different dialects were spoken. In 1950,34.7% of the population of Schleswig-Holstein, 26.6% of Lower Saxony, 20.8% of Bavaria and 18.2% of Wiirttemberg-Baden were people who had been expelled (Hugo Moser 1979b: 323). While Pomeranians and East Prussians predominated in Schleswig-Holstein, Silesians in Lower Saxony and Sudeten Germans in Bavaria and Wiirttemberg-Baden, there were smaller groups from each 'home-region' throughout the Federal Republic (Hugo Moser 1979b: 330). It was only those expellees who remained at home all day whose language was unaffected by the move - old people and housewives.Those at work tended to adapt towards the regional variety of the area of resettlement. Children became bidialectal, employing their parents' dialect at home and the regional dialect of the area elsewhere (Moser 1979b). Today the effects of this great migration have largely worn off, although it may have contributed to a levelling-out of some regionalisms in Standard German. (Moser (1979b: 335) gives some examples for Wurttemberg.) The second generation of those who had been expelled, like the second generation of Eastern European refugees all over the world, has come to terms with the permanence of its new environment. This new attitude has