Open Access

Martina Steffen

• The article is concerned with an aspect of language contact between a German immigrant dialect of southern Brazil and Brazilian Portuguese. It investigates how the German-speaking minorities in South Brazil pronounce Portuguese /r/ in syllabic coda position. The investigation is based on the analysis of informants reading a text in Portuguese, who were recorded for the Atlas of German-speaking minorities in the Rio de la Plata Basin (ALMA-H: Atlas Linguístico-Contatual das Minorias Alemãs na Bacia do Prata – Hunsrückisch). Owing to the pluridimensional method used in this linguistic atlas, extralinguistic variables like level of education, age and gender can be correlated with phonetic variation. It can be shown that there is variation in the realization of /r/ in coda by descendants of German immigrants, but that their linguistic behavior in this case (in contrast to an earlier study concerning their realization of Portuguese /r/ forte) is like the one of their Portuguese-speakingThe article is concerned with an aspect of language contact between a German immigrant dialect of southern Brazil and Brazilian Portuguese. It investigates how the German-speaking minorities in South Brazil pronounce Portuguese /r/ in syllabic coda position. The investigation is based on the analysis of informants reading a text in Portuguese, who were recorded for the Atlas of German-speaking minorities in the Rio de la Plata Basin (ALMA-H: Atlas Linguístico-Contatual das Minorias Alemãs na Bacia do Prata – Hunsrückisch). Owing to the pluridimensional method used in this linguistic atlas, extralinguistic variables like level of education, age and gender can be correlated with phonetic variation. It can be shown that there is variation in the realization of /r/ in coda by descendants of German immigrants, but that their linguistic behavior in this case (in contrast to an earlier study concerning their realization of Portuguese /r/ forte) is like the one of their Portuguese-speaking compatriots. With regard to the choice of specific allophones, for example, it is the socioculturally lower class groups (Cb), young generations (GI) and men (m) who most often present a retroflex pronunciation regardless of their origin.…