Visualizing language repertoires

Examples of language bodies and landscapes

Language body student, Switzerland

I speak four different languages. My mother or first language is Albanian. It covers a big part of my language body, because I use it every day to talk with my family, my friends and my boyfriend. Besides the biggest part of my upper body my hand is also green / blue. I painted it that way, because Albanian, as my hand, too, is a tool, that helps me in my every day life. French, in the same hand, is marked with blue, too. It´s only a small part, because I don´t like this language too much. Nevertheless I can handle it and use it quite a lot in Switzerland. German is my second language. English is my last language.It's in my heart and feet. With English I can communicate everywhere in the world.

Linguistic landscape – student, Austria

(My Socialization and I, ÖDaF-Conference 2010, Georg Gombos)

Linguistic landscape – student, Switzerland

Language zoos – pupils, 9 years, Italy

Language house and language tree

Examples of language biography videos

Student, Spain

Examples of language biographies

1. Student, Austria

"The language of my heart in which I think, dream, laugh, cry and love is the Styrian dialect. I grew up at the countryside, at home we never communicated in Standard German

At Primary School there were the first differentiations between dialect and standard variety. It began to be important to talk "beautifully" during the lessons[…]"

2. Student, Austria

C‘era una volta eine language che mi fascinated sehr: Den first contact mit einer foreign language hatte ich at the age of 4. Mein dad hatte kein Englisch at school und versuchte sich durch language courses „very British“ im holiday zu verständigen. At that time habe ich alles, was ich nicht verstanden hatte, interesting, spannend, fascinating gefunden und I immediately began alles nachzuplappern. I fell in love with it until un giorno im Urlaub qualcosa passiert ist. Ho incontrato eine andere, sehr seltsame, extremly veloce Sprache. Perchè sie mir noch nie zuvor aufgefallen ist? Strano! Era molto anders als the first one. Adesso war ich confused. Ero sicura che I was in love con la first one ma what now? Ma meine mamma told me that at the age of mio fratello I could learn beide Sprachen und this mi piaceva molto...

After einer Weile incesure Plapperns I was abile di express myself in der ersten foreign language. La seconda gpt always less important and I tried to speak in English whenever I could. I even went abroad – to England of course – and tried to be very loyal to my old friend. I was glad he could forgive me!! Nobody should ever be able to separate me from him! – not a big mug of chocolat chaud nor a huge glass of naranjada.

But then alcuni anni dopo I started to realise, dass man ja como amici in real-life auch mehrere Sprachen liken könnte. Sono ritornatta to my second friend and apologized, dass ich so gemein gewesen war. Oggi sind wir drei best friends and sometimes we even cominciamo a mischolare le parole perchè all the three of us vogliamo verwendet sein im selben Satz – se possibile sogar noch im selben word.

Da poco tempo we even thought about inventare noch jemand anders zum Spielen. Wi kennen und ja mittlerweile so bene, dass nobody has to be jealous auf den anderen. Obwohl la seconda definitely ha ancora bisogno di sehr viel Zuneinung. Ma chissà?

Forse un giorno we could decide to invite einen not so entfernten Bekannten o un total stranger aus dem Norden e parliamo over a cup of cafe or cafè con leche ... Until dann we decimos ha det campngplass in Norge, un giorno werden we ritornare anche per imparare. E a te gentle reader takk per la tua attenzione.

Fin

:) bye-bye, ciao, adiòs, ha det, salut, hawylfawr :)

3. Student, Switzerland

Language biography

4. Student, Switzerland