Borrowing rates among speakers of Slavic minority languages in Europe

What is it about?

We show that speakers who live in small bilingual communities use very similar rates of words from the majority language when they speak in their minority language. These rates are generally low: less than 5% of all the words used in a conversation. Low rates are observed when there are established literary traditions in the minority language or when there has been little everyday contact between the majority and the minority language in the past independent of the present-day situation.

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Why is it important?

Our research shows that there are unconscious patterns of "language mixing" shared by speakers who live in small, tightly-knit communities. It also shows that even though speakers of minority languages fear the intrusion of words from the majority language, the rates of these words in a conversation are in reality much lower than expected.