Sprachraum

English

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from German Sprachraum.

Noun

Sprachraum

1. (linguistics) Language area, language zone; geographical region where a language is spoken
   • a. 2011, Alexander Borg, Towards a history and typology of color categorization in colloquial Arabic in 2011, Robert E. Maclaury, Galina V. Paramei, Don Dedrick, Anthropology of Color, John Benjamins Publishing Company, page 263:

     The Arabic Sprachraum is roughly co-extensive with a geographical continuum stretching from the Arabian peninsula and the lands adjoining the Fertile Crescent to Morocco and from S.E. Anatolia to Sudan.

   • 2011, Srdjan Vucetic, The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of a Racialized Identity in International Relations, Stanford University Press, page 147:

     The networked world is typically envisioned as a globe-spanning English Sprachraum.

   • 2013, Don Ringe, Joseph F. Eska, Historical Linguistics: Toward a Twenty-First Century Reintegration, Cambridge University Press, pages 100–101:

     […] ; in addition, there is an area along the southeastern border of the Dutch Sprachraum that exhibited the same peculiarity (ibid. pp. 12–13).

2. (psycholinguistics) the repertoire of language available to a given person
   • 1976, In search of love and competence: twenty-five years of service, training, and research at the Reiss-Davis Child Study Center, Reiss-Davis Child Study Center, page 287:

     […] as an expansion of the language space, the Sprachraum. The language space of a child expands as his object relationships develop.

   • 1988, Achim Eschbach, Karl Bühler’s Theory of Language, John Benjamins Publishing Company, pages 6–7:

     As one works with different categories of patients, one discovers that each of them can be described in terms of the Sprachraum, the language space they have mastered and use in order to communicate with us, appeal to us, struggle with us, oppose us, resist us, and search for attachment of which they may well be afraid and must avoid.

   • 1989, Rudol Ekstein, The Language of Psychotherapy, John Benjamins Publishing Company, page 280:

     Many patients have very little Sprachraum, very little capacity for the use of language to expresss ^[sic] their thoughts or perhaps to disguise their thoughts.

Translations

geographical region where a language is spoken

• Dutch: taalgebied (nl) n
• French: zone linguistique f
• German: Sprachraum (de) m
• Russian: языково́е простра́нство n (jazykovóje prostránstvo), шпра́храум m (špráxraum), шпрахра́ум m (špraxráum)

German

Etymology

Sprache +‎ Raum

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈʃpʁaːxˌʁaʊ̯m/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: Sprach‧raum

Noun

Sprachraum m (strong, genitive Sprachraumes or Sprachraums, plural Sprachräume)

1. (linguistics) Sprachraum, language area, language zone; geographical region in which a language is spoken

   Synonym: Sprachgebiet

Declension

Declension of Sprachraum [masculine, strong]

	singular			plural
	indef.	def.	noun	def.	noun
nominative	ein	der	Sprachraum	die	Sprachräume
genitive	eines	des	Sprachraumes, Sprachraums	der	Sprachräume
dative	einem	dem	Sprachraum, Sprachraume1	den	Sprachräumen
accusative	einen	den	Sprachraum	die	Sprachräume

¹Now rare, see notes.

Descendants

• → English: Sprachraum
• → English: language area (calque)

Further reading

• “Sprachraum” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
• “Sprachraum” in Uni Leipzig: Wortschatz-Lexikon
• “Sprachraum” in Duden online