Estonia 1850-2010: Texts, Agents, Institutions and Practices

Marin Jänes and Maris Saagpakk on Multilingualism in Baltic German Anecdotes in Reykjavík

At the conference of Baltic and Scandinavian German Scholars Jänes and Saagpakk discussed the issues of language contact as represented in Baltic German anecdotes in their paper „Mehrsprachigkeit in deutschbaltischen Anekdoten‟. The collection of anecdotes „Fanfaronaden‟ analyzed in the paper was published in 1928. The anecdotes about three local languages Estonian, German and Russian with their complex interrelations reveal contextual information about language hierarchies in the past. Since information about language behaviour is rare, the anecdotes dan be used as a source for learning about attitudes towards languages among different groups in the society. The conference took place in the University of Iceland, June 8-10.