Hanoverian – A Bygone Vernacular?

The fact that a particularly standard-oriented German is spoken in Hanover is a well-known topos among most language users in the German-speaking area and often beyond. However, even Hanover’s inhabitants are rarely aware that there is also an urban mixed variety of High and Low German spoken in the city, comparable to the mixed varieties (“Missingsch”) in Hamburg or Berlin. Until well into the 20th century, there is plenty of evidence of this so-called Hanoverian (“Hannöversch”) being used, at least in literature. Research into the extent to which this Eastphalian Missingsch branch is still vital as a vernacular and part of linguistic knowledge has so far been a desideratum of North German dialectology. The project The City Language of Hanover examines the current linguistic reality of the Lower Saxony state capital and deliberately includes Hanoverian. Thus, Hanoverian features were integrated into the catalogue of variables and Hanoverian test sentences were included in the perceptual-linguistic part of the study. Furthermore, questions on (historical) language use and knowledge of varieties were asked in the qualitative interview. The present article presents initial results on linguistic traces of Hanoverian from an object-language perspective and sheds light on existing knowledge and attitudes towards this variety.