Knowledge transfer at ZAS is not limited to the practical fields, policy and economy, but it includes also measures that aim at the broader public and interested high school students. People are also invited to support our research through participating in our research studies or submitting own audio recordings using our App Plapper.
The transfer of knowledge to the interested public is realized at the ZAS through various event formats. Firmly established since 2003 are the regular participation in the Long Night of the Sciences Berlin with different stations and the lecture series "Treffpunkt Sprache" organized together with the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin since 2014. More recent are regular participations in formats organized by the Leibniz Association, such as "Book a Scientist" or "Leibniz in the Bundestag." Research of the ZAS is also presented in a hands-on way at the "Berlin Science Week" or "Mind the Lab"
"Treffpunkt Sprache" is a lecture series with three lectures per semester on linguistic topics, aimed at the interested public. After each lecture, guests have the opportunity to discuss individual questions with the speakers at an informal get-together. The series is organized by ZAS together with the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Since 2003, ZAS regularly participates in the Long Night of Science Berlin/Potsdam. Through hands-on experiments, lectures, games, posters, films and other forms of presentation, visitors and linguists get in direct dialogue with each other. Since 2017, ZAS presents its research together with other Leibniz institutions in the House of the Leibniz Association in Berlin Mitte.
Every year since 2008, ZAS organizes the German Linguistics Olympiad and the participation of the German National Team in the International Linguistics Olympiad. Students between the ages of 14 and 19 around the world try to detect patterns in languages they do not know. The tasks include finding out structures (grammar) or deciphering the meaning of words and word groups. The German Linguistics Olympiad consists of three selection rounds with increasingly challenging tasks. The third selection round, i.e. the final round, is combined with intensive training by linguists from ZAS and other institutions. The four most successful participants of the final round form the German national team for the International Linguistics Olympiad and travel to the competition chaperoned by ZAS.
Since 2021, the organization has been carried out in collaboration with the Institute for Language and Information at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. At the beginning of 2022, the Förderverein Deutsche Linguistik-Olympiade e.V. was founded for this purpose.
The ZAS offers the possibility to do study-accompanying internships (voluntary internship, mandatory internship) and student internships. The duration of a voluntary study-accompanying full-time internship can extend a maximum of 3 months. Mandatory internships can be longer. The duration of a student internship includes two weeks. Dates are arranged individually and depend on the capacities of the ZAS staff. Interns are either assigned to a particular research area or a project or rotate through different areas and tasks during the duration of the stay. Unfortunately, internships cannot be paid.
More detailed information can be found on the webpage Internships at ZAS ››
The ZAS and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin are constantly looking for people (minimum age 18) who would like to participate in linguistic experiments for an expense allowance - either at an institute in Berlin-Mitte or on the internet. Interested persons receive detailed information on the website and can register for invitations to linguistic experiments. Registration is non-binding. Each invitation to an experiment offers the possibility to decide for or against the participation in that particular experiment.
In the summer of 2022, the ZAS published an app for mobile devices that allows interested persons to easily participate in short questionnaire studies from home or even make their own voice recordings, which are then analyzed and evaluated by the scientists. In this way, our researchers also obtain data from people who would probably never come to our laboratories.
"Berlin Spricht!" is a joint project of ZAS, the Institute for German Language and Linguistics at Humboldt-Universiät zu Berlin and SWLI (SOAS World Languages Institute, London), which documents the linguistic diversity in the urban area of Berlin. The aim is to support speakers of different languages inpreservation their languages in Berlin and to promote contacts between language communities in Berlin and scientists. The recordings presented on the project's page were selected by the individuals themselves and are linked to the speaker's place of origin and their language. We are still looking for new languages and speakers from Berlin - if you are interested, please contact nico.lehmann@hu-berlin.de.