Legal comparison for terminology development: The case of German in South Tyrol

Elena Chiocchetti & Natascia Ralli
Eurac Research
Table of contents

South Tyrol (Alto Adige in Italian, Südtirol in German and Ladin) is a multilingual province in northern Italy with a long, partly troubled, history of language contact. Consequently, there has always been some language planning, albeit not necessarily with overt policies (Wolf 2015: 5, 41–43). Deliberate terminology planning is a more recent development (Chiocchetti 2021). This paper focuses on the last century, particularly on the period after the Second World War. It also concentrates on German as a local-only minority language (Edwards 2007: 460), that is, as a minority language at local level but at the same time official language in other countries, since this has decisive consequences on terminology planning in South Tyrol.

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