German as a contact language in South Africa: linguistic perspectives FrankeKatharina 2017 This paper explores existing literature and linguistic research on German as spoken in South Africa from a language contact perspective. Following a brief overview of the situation of German speakers in South Africa, this paper presents a survey of various linguistic features of South African German, by drawing extensively on data from the study of German in South Africa by Stielau (1980). Structural changes in the morpho-syntax and syntax will be discussed in detail. I will conclude by briefly considering possessive pronoun constructions in South African German thereby reviewing the issue of explaining language change in language contact situations.