SUMMARY
Transylvania, which also comprises an important German linguistic island, has been historically characterized by multilingualism and by diglossia (dialect – standard language). Registry documents written in the German language outside the German linguistic enclave provide information on the peculiarities of the German language in the selected regions and on the institutional uses of written High German in the Early Modern period. The article is concerned with the German regional language in contact with other languages. By examining court case minutes (1650–1700) issued by the administrative center of Hermannstadt/Sibiu, it tries to present a historical profile of German as an official language in Transylvania. In synchronic terms, the language in question is a supra-regional variety of German known as Rumäniendeutsch, although it is not spoken only by Romanian Germans. Following the massive exodus of Romanian Germans after 1990 and the dramatic decrease in the number of those who have Romanian German as their first language, the linguistic situation has changed considerably. Nowadays the standard variety of Romanian German is being heavily influenced by the Romanian language, which accounts for its several distinctive features presented in the final part of the paper along with a brief overview of the current status of the German language in Romania.