Abstract
Bavarian is the native language of most South Tyroleans in Italy. Because Bavarian does not have a written form, German is used for reading, writing and formal communication. Few studies have empirically investigated the potential disadvantages posed to Bavarianspeaking children in their early language process. This study addresses language learning at the pre-primary school phase by comparing the German language comprehension of 54 Bavarian-speaking children (mean age=3;8 years) living in northern Italy and 44 native German peers (mean age=4;0 years) from Germany. Since all Bavarian speakers are educated in German, a language structurally distinct from the local form they grow up with, the objective of this research was to examine receptive German language comprehension using the standardized tool TROG-D (Fox, 2013). Preliminary results show that the diglossic context present in South Tyrol interferes with children’s performance in German. Native German preschoolers performed significantly better than their Bavarian-speaking age-matched peers.