Austrian German

Austrian German (German: Österreichisches Deutsch), Austrian Standard German,Standard Austrian German (German: Österreichisches Standarddeutsch) or Austrian High German (German: Österreichisches Hochdeutsch), is the variety of Standard German written and spoken in Austria and North Italy. It has the highest sociolinguistic prestige locally, as it is the variation used in the media and for other formal situations.

In less formal situations, Austrians tend to use forms closer to or identical with the Bavarian and Alemannic dialects, traditionally spoken – but rarely written – in Austria.

History

Austrian German has its beginning in the mid-18th century, when empress Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II introduced compulsory schooling (in 1774) and several reforms of administration in their multilingual Habsburg empire. At the time, the written standard was Oberdeutsche Schreibsprache, which was highly influenced by the Bavarian and Alemannic dialects of Austria. Another option was to create a new standard based on the Southern German dialects, as proposed by the linguist Janez Žiga Popovič (Johann Siegmund Popowitsch). Instead they decided for pragmatic reasons to adopt the already standardized Chancellery language of Saxony (Sächsische Kanzleisprache or Meißner Kanzleideutsch), which was based on the administrative language of the non-Austrian area of Meißen and Dresden. Thus Standard Austrian German has the same geographic origin as the Standard German of Germany (Bundesdeutsches Hochdeutsch, also Deutschländisches Deutsch) and Swiss High German (Schweizer Hochdeutsch, not to be confused with the Alemannic Swiss German dialects).