The Corpus German In Namibia (Dnam): A Resource For Language Contact, Language Variation And Sociolinguistics

This article describes the corpus Deutsch in Namibia (DNam, 'German in Namibia'), which is openly accessible via the Datenbankfur Gesprochenes Deutsch (DGD, 'Database for Spoken German'). This corpus is a new digital resource which comprehensively and systematically documents the language use of the German-speaking minority in Namibia and the related attitudes towards language. We discuss the data collection and elicitation methods used (conversation groups, "language situations", semi-structured interviews), the data processing, including transcription, normalisation and tagging, as well as the general characteristics of the corpus (size, available metadata etc.) and some basic functionalities available in the DGD. First research results based on this new empirical resource illustrate its value for studies on language contact, language variation and sociolinguistics.