Language shift in the Erlangen Huguenot community

Abstract This article examines the language shift and accompanying changing status of French German in Erlangen Huguenot community (southern Germany) during approximately 150 years following first immigrants settling 1686. Our quantitative analysis is based on a diachronically-balanced corpus 314 archival sources transmitted from this provides an overview to over time. The linguistic choices are influenced by social group writers addressees, direction communication domain texts. qualitative focuses multilingual texts practices throughout time period examined traces two languages community, as dominant earlier years, use conceptually oral with retention school contexts consistory, symbol intellectuals early 19th century. paper empirical accounts for under-researched context contributes historical sociolinguistic research contact, multilingualism, identity.