Austria is preparing to fight off an invasion – by the German language. The country’s education minister this week announced a major new drive to preserve the unique Austrian form of German, in the face of encroaching words and expressions from across the border in Germany.
“What is heard in movies, on TV or the internet, is often produced or dubbed in our neighbouring country Germany,” the education minister, Gabriele Heinisch-Hosek, wrote in a 64-page booklet distributed to schools.
“One consequence is that specifically Austrian peculiarities and expressions of our language slowly but surely fall into the background.” It is reminiscent of efforts by the Académie Francaise to prevent the use of phrases imported from English – except in this case the offending words do not come from a foreign language.
It has been said of Austria and Germany, as of Britain and the USA, that they are divided by a common language.
While Austrians and Germans can understand each other, there are many words and phrases that mark Austrian German out as different. When Austria joined the EU in 1995, it insisted its version of the language be given protected status.
But it seems that has not been enough to prevent expressions creeping in from across the border. The new government booklet encourages children to use the Austrian version of the language, and urges teachers to favour the Austrian word Schlagobers for cream, over the German Sahne; Marille for apricot, instead of Aprikose; and the traditional Austrian greeting Servus for goodbye, instead of the German Tschüs.
The move comes after a recent study for the University of Vienna found that more than half the Austrian teachers surveyed believed German forms of vocabulary and grammar to be more correct than the Austrian.
Austrian linguists complain that even within Austria, their version of the language is often seen as a mere local dialect, rather than a separate form of German.