Turkish, Bulgarian and German Language Mixing Among Bulgarian Muslim Roma in Germany
Authors: Kyuchukov Hristo 
Published: January 2021

The paper presents the phenomenon of language mixing with Bulgarian by Muslim Roma migrants from northeastern Bulgaria in Berlin, Germany. They identify as Turks and in their everyday communication speak mainly Bulgarian and old variety of Turkish, in the scientific literature known as Balkanized Turkish. They can speak relatively little German and have low proficiency in the language. The paper describes the language mixing as well as the forms of code-switching between Turkish, Bulgarian and German. These linguistic and social phenomena within the Muslim Roma community are analysed within the framework of several sociolinguistic theories regarding code-switching and bilingualism. The theory of J. Gumperz (1962) about communication matrix is used and patterns of Turkish- Bulgarian, Turkish-German and Turkish-Bulgarian-German are presented and analysed. The grammatical categories which are switched in the Turkish-Bulgarian-German language contacts, involve nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and negations. However, code-switching is used only in communication with other Bulgarians. In communication with Turks from Turkey they switch only between Turkish and German and use another variety of Turkish.
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