This article provides an overview of Jugendsprache, youth language, as spoken in the German Democratic Republic, a variety far less studied than its West German cousin. Attitudes toward and perceptions of GDR youth language are treated, showing far greater diversity than previous Western discussions have found. More importantly, this study provides empirical data from a variety of sources for a sociolect previously largely lacking such evidence.

In a small community of approximately 760 High Alemannic speakers, four reflexes of the MHG directional particle anhin co-occur: (aje), (ae), (ahe) and (ane) in a case of active variation leading to change. The distribution patterns indicate that the most active variants, (aje) and (ane), are evaluated differently by different segments of the community. In the adult population we find speakers for whom the variation is still active and subconscious as well as those for whom the change is complete or otherwise inactive. In contrast, the children and adolescents use the conservative variant as a sociolinguistic stereotype. This pattern suggests that the classical sociolinguistic definition of speech community may be inadequate.

The article* shows that the Germanic-Gothic word for book was originally an athematic stem and that its etymology may lead to one or more of the Eurasian languages which were Indoeuropeanized and thus became Germanic.

Nineteenth-century editors of the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle regarded the now lost Riga MS (= R) as primary, asserting that the only other extant MS for the chronicle, Cpg. 367 (= H), though actually a sister-manuscript, was an ortho-graphically debased copy ofthe former. Obliged because of a large lacuna in R to resort to H (207va, 37–215va, 15) for textual continuity, they proceeded, in line with then established practice for MHG, to normalize these lines, thereby sweeping away various details that would have shed light on the dialectal features of H. On the basis of an examination of such details taken from the manuscript portion in question it is argued that the dialect area in which H was written is East Central German.