In order to speak of a linguistic enclave, two basic conditions must be met:
Accordingly, most varieties spoken within a language island are minority languages.
Often, there is a corresponding ethnocultural difference between the inhabitants of the linguistic enclave and their surroundings. This is related to the fact that linguistic enclaves are often the result of intentional settlement during which people take with them not only their language, but also the customs and traditions of their area of origin.
The inhabitants of linguistic enclaves may also differ from their surroundings in terms of their religious affiliation since the establishment of so-called "colonies" often had religious reasons, as was the case, for example, with the overseas Mennonite communities or the Transylvanian Landlers in Romania.
Some linguistic enclaves also had special privileges such as exemption from duty, self-determination, the right to deforestation, etc. With these means, some sovereigns tried to make the settlement an attractive option for new settlers with the aim of agricultural reclamation. Last but not least, topographical obstacles and thus the difficult accessibility by transport favoured the permanence of linguistic enclaves (cf. Mattheier 1994, Wiesinger 1983).
Even within the VerbaAlpina study area there are numerous German linguistic enclaves in Upper Italy, some of which are only historical (cf. Comitatio unitario delle isole linguistiche storiche germaniche in Italia).
These include the Alemannic-speaking Walser communities in the Western Alps along the border between Italy and Switzerland:
The Bavarian language minorities in central Upper Italy with only the first two still having a stable number of speakers while the last one no longer has any speakers:
Further Bavarian linguistic enclaves in the east of the Italian Alps:
In addition to the evidence from the Tyrolean Language Atlas, valuable Cimbrian or Fersentaler evidence from (A) Palai im Fersental, (B) Lusern and even from the (C) municipality of Selva di Progno has already been contributed via the project's crowdsourcing page (cf. 3144).