Areály jazykového kontaktu ve střední Evropě a německo-český mikroareál ve východním Rakousku

Not only does pluricentric German display characteristic features of Standard Average European, but it also comprises several distinguishing features in various contact areas with Baltic, Finno-Ugrian and Slavic languages. Therefore, it seems justified to speak not only of one Central European language area, but of several varyingly distinct and overlapping language contact areas in Central Europe. Like isoglosses, which constitute certain dialect areas in dialectology, bundled language contact phenomena distinguish certain contact areas from others. A major language contact area in Central Europe – merely one out of several – is the contact zone which we can associate with the former centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with German, Hungarian, Czech and Slovak as its core languages as well as Polish and Slovene as its only partially involved peripheral languages. From this contact area, a micro-area emerged in Vienna and Eastern Austria that was particularly affected by the influence of Czech on German.