Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, France, Italy, Namibia, Paraguay, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa and Hungary are just some of the countries that were included in the program of the fifth "German Abroad" conference from 9 to 13 October 2023: These are countries where varieties of German are still spoken today - by multilingual locals.

Researchers representing four continents and eighteen countries met at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (KU) and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) to discuss the special characteristics of these German varieties and their speech communities. In addition to typical questions of variational linguistics and sociolinguistics as well as language contact and multilingualism research, the main focus lay on the comparability of the language systems and language constellations across the regions. 

This year, a special emphasis was also placed on promoting junior researchers in this growing field of research. The conference week began with a pre-conference workshop in Eichstätt, which gave junior researchers the opportunity to gain an overview of the peer group's worldwide research projects while at the same time addressing fundamental questions about working with language data. (Several international participants were sponsored for this purpose).

The conference began on Tuesday, October 10, with a welcome address by the hosts Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kürschner (German Linguistics, KU) and Prof. Dr. Claudia Maria Riehl ( German as a Foreign Language, LMU). The first plenary lecture (Joachim Steffen, Augsburg) took participants to Brazil, where the regional presence of German dialects is also reflected in Portuguese. Panels on verbal morphosyntax and the pressing issue of language preservation filled the morning. The afternoon was dedicated, among other things, to the internal and external multilingualism of speech communities. Various projects in the South American region were able to meet and coordinate at a subsequent gathering of the MinGLa network.

Wednesday began with a plenary lecture on the Kroondal German language island in South Africa (Sheena Shah, Dortmund). Transnational speaker communities and nominal morphosyntax were the focus of the morning panels. The more than 80 participants were then shuttled by bus to the Sudeten German House and Museum in Munich, where the Institute for German Culture and History of Southeast Europe at the LMU, the Adalbert Stifter Association and the House of the German East welcomed the researchers. A panel discussion dealt with the question "What is German?" viewed from the perspective of German minorities in Northern Italy, Romania, Brazil and Croatia. The painful and instructive history of Bohemia and Moravia from where German speakers were expelled after WW II was also discussed during the museum visit.

The fourth day of the conference began at the LMU with a presentation on the German language in Hungary (Elisabeth Knipf-Komlósi, Budapest). The panels were dedicated to the topics of language perception, syntax, lexis and phonetics. A poster session in the afternoon facilitated a lively exchange on projects in their early stages. The joint conference dinner at the Max Emanuel Brewery rounded off the program on Thursday.

Friday opened with a plenary lecture on German language islands in Northern Italy (Silvia Dal Negro, Bolzano). Prof. Dr. Claudia Maria Riehl then gave a presentation on the interplay between internal structuring processes and contact-related change. Further presentations dealt with questions about the status of German in the world and the future technical possibilities to make direct comparisons across different language corpora. The conference ended with acknowledgements and the announcement of the next venue: German Abroad 6 will take place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from October 7th to 10th, 2025.

The conference was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the internal funding program of the Catholic University of Eichstätt (proFOR+), the Eichstätt and Munich University Societies (EUG, MUG), the Maximilian Bickhoff Foundation (Eichstätt) and the Institute for German Culture and History of Southeast Europe at the LMU Munich.