A study of the speech of bilingual children of Russian Germans living in Germany

Abstract

The article presents the relevant issue of analysing the common features of the “grammar” of Russian as language inherited by the second or third generation of migrant children in Europe and in the world. The novelty of the study is in the fact that it compares the speech of children with different dominant languages and, in particular, studies the speech of a group of children from families of Russian Germans living in Germany under dual language inheritance. Their parents have a very rich migration history, as they are, in turn, also heritage speakers of German, the language, which they spoke in their family. In the present paper, the main task will be to identify the common features determined by the contact between Russian as a heritage language and other languages, especially at morphological and lexical levels. For this purpose, a field research project was conducted at the Learning and Integration Centre “Dialog e. V.” in Reutlingen. The analysis of oral and written works of bilingual children of the last generation of Russian Germans showed not only the common elements of erosion identified in the “heritage grammar”, but also the special linguistic features caused by the transition from German-Russian to Russian-German inheritance. The influence of their parents’ language distinguishes them from other groups of Russian students, emphasizes the importance of studying not only children’s, but also their parents’ speech, as well as teaching standard Russian in the framework of non-formal education.