How visible is Turkish in the public space of Munich?
Visible Turkish: Linguistic Landscapes of Munich explores the presence and role of Turkish in the urban linguistic landscape. At Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), students document and analyse multilingual signs across the city—from shop signs and advertisements to public notices and everyday inscriptions.
The initiative is led by Dr. Nevra Lischewski, a research associate in Turkish Studies at the Institute for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at LMU Munich, where it is developed as part of her teaching and research activities.
Beyond examining multilingualism in urban space, the project seeks to make Turkish more visible in all areas of public life. By focusing on Turkish as one of the most significant migration languages in Germany, it highlights how the language appears, interacts with others, and acquires meaning within the urban context.
At the same time, the work is designed as a bridge between classroom learning and real-world experience. Language learning is deliberately moved beyond the classroom into the urban environment, where students encounter language as a lived and dynamic social practice. Using the Lingscape app, students collect geolocated images and annotate them according to linguistic and sociolinguistic criteria. This hands-on approach fosters analytical skills, critical thinking, and a deeper awareness of language, identity, and space. In this way, the project
contributes to a broader understanding of multilingual urban life and invites both students and the wider public to reflect on the visibility and significance of Turkish and other languages in everyday environments.
Funded by the Fonds zur Förderung der Lehre at LMU Munich, the project runs from 2024 to 2026. It combines research, teaching, and digital methods to create sustainable learning tools and to actively engage students in linguistic fieldwork. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the LMU Universitätsgesellschaft for supporting innovative teaching projects and making this initiative possible.
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