Newswise — AUSTIN, Texas—The way second- and third-generation immigrants learn a language may spell trouble early on in school and further isolate them from society, according to a Germanic studies researcher at The University of Texas at Austin.

Over the last few decades, immigration has surged in Germany, with workers migrating from Turkey and other countries in the 1960s and 70s and Russian- and Polish-speakers of German descent arriving in the 1990s. Eventually, German became the family language for many; but according to UT Austin Germanic studies researcher David Huenlich, this “family” language can be quite different from “standard” German.

“Pronunciation and phonology does the most to categorize these new vernaculars,” Huenlich said. “And similar to American dialects, there also are other stereotypical features of this way of speaking German that give off clues as to who the speakers are and where they come from.”

Huenlich tested more than sixty fourth-graders on their perception of standard German verbs, for instance, finding that certain children missed as many as half of the words tested. While their language is completely functional at home, they run into issues once they enter school and the language gets closer to standard use.

“I don’t think it’s an effect of multilingualism,” Huenlich said. “I think it has to do with a degree of social isolation over time.”

Huenlich compared the number of missed words to several factors, such as which neighborhood students came from or whether the parents were born abroad. He eventually found the child’s network or social group to be the most powerful predictor of how the child would speak.

“I visited neighborhoods to see who these children interacted with and the strong social groups they belong to,” Huenlich said. “Here, their language is completely functional — it’s not defunct or deficient. It’s the mother tongue to many in that particular network, but it’s not sufficient to succeed in school.”

Huenlich said these “linguistically marked” communities may result from migration policies and hostility toward migrant communities over the last half century that created certain living patterns across the country.

“You can’t tear these communities apart now. So how do we fix it?” Huenlich said. “People need to become more linguistically aware.”

Huenlich suggested future migrants should be more spread out and immersed in society, rather than grouped together in isolated communities.

“Consider the current refugee situation in Germany,” Huenlich said. “If all of these people are in refugee camps for even just a year, it’s going to do something to the way they socialize. Living among other speakers of local varieties of German is the best way to effectively influence their language acquisition over time. Language courses can’t accomplish that.”

Huenlich is a Ph. D. candidate in the Department of Germanic Studies and a researcher for the Texas German Dialect Project. He presented his dissertation “The roots of ‘multiethnolects:’ Effects of migration on the lexicon and speech of German-speaking school children” in December 2015.