History of Research of Slavic Influences on the German Language

The objective of this article to familiarize the reader with the rich history of research of Slavic influences on the general German language, on its regional varieties and dialects. They go back to the middle of the XIX century. They are poorly known, even by linguists. A particular attention was paid to the earliest research, the first, yet controversial, statements on Slavic influences on the German language. Finally, the disputes on the recognition of certain words as borrowings from the Slavic languages have not so far been resolved. We may see a particular increase in the said researches after the end of the Second World War. Numerous German regional vocabularies from the territories neighboring the Slavic languages and the German Language Atlas provided a great deal of materials. Slavic and German linguists, mainly German linguists, have amassed a huge number of dialect-related and historic materials concerning borrowings from the Slavic languages in the German language, from which only a minor part concerns the German literary language (about 180) or colloquial German language, however the prevailing majority (about 4 000) concerns different German dialects, in particular, the old German dialects, which are no longer existing. These are mainly lexical borrowings, however the morphological influence is also at issue here, e.g. the Slavic suffixes being added to the German root words