The way you speak in primary school reveals if you will stay behind in your native part of the country or head for the big city to get an education. This is one of the conclusions in University of Copenhagen linguist Malene Monka’s new PhD thesis.
“My research shows that young people, who end up moving away from their native area to seek an education and career elsewhere, change the way they speak already in their early youth. They speak less dialect than comparable peers at the same age,” Malene Monka from LANCHART at University of Copenhagen explains.
During the late 70’s and 80’s, a group of Danish linguists conducted interviews with a large group of informants who were finishing primary school. Now, together with a colleague from The University of Southern Denmark, Malene Monka has re-interviewed the same informants.
She compared six mobile informants (that is, people who have moved away) with a group of informants that have stayed behind in their native area. Subsequently, she analyzed and compared a large number of different dialectal traits in the new and the old interviews. Her research has been conducted in three different municipalities in three different parts of Denmark. More.
See: Science Daily
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