The article aims to provide a quantitative analysis of the evolution of the plurilingual repertory of two German-speaking linguistic islands in Friuli Venezia Giulia. The main objective of the analysis is to assess what are the determining factors in the development of their respective repertoires, building on the basic observation that the two communities share some historical and social characteristics while few yet crucial differences can be singled out. The two communities under investigation are Sauris/Zahre and Timau/Tischlbong; in the past decades these two German enclaves have attracted the attention of scholars in relation to both the ‘internal’ features of the respective Germanic (southern Bavarians) varieties and to the dynamics existing between the codes used within the communities, that is, the local
German dialects, the regional language (Friulian) and the standard language (Italian). The article analyzes the development in the relationships between these varieties building on a sociolinguistic investigation whose results are compared with previous inquiries.
