Bairisch verstehen – auf Hochdeutsch reagieren. Strategien zum Aufbau einer rezeptiven Varietätenkompetenz für (tschechische) DaF-Lerner

Based on previous studies discussing the thematization of German dialects in lessons of German as a foreign language within and outside the German speaking countries, the article outlines a didactic concept for building receptive variety competence of Czech learners of German towards the diatopic varieties of German spoken in the Free State of Bavaria. Using the example of the North and Middle Bavarian dialects, it will be demonstrated how the Bavarian-Austrian loan vocabulary present in the Czech non-standard varieties can be used didactically to enable learners to overcome the phonetic distance between dialect and standard language, which is the main barrier to comprehension. In this respect, the learners’ inner multilingualism is used to differentiate their outer multilingualism. The current foreign German studies background to the concept is the establishment of interdisciplinary Bavarian Studies at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (2019) whose curriculum provides a more profound receptive study of the dialects of Bavaria.