This thesis examines the use of language in binational families in Austria. Parents of binational families are coming from different nations; the fathers interviewed for this study grew up in Tanzania, two of the mothers in Austria, one in Serbia and one mother in Romania. The relevant data for this research were collected through narrative interviews and analyzed according to the concept of Grounded Theory. The research question is: Do children in binational families with Tanzanian father and

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... ustrian/ Serbian/ Romanian mother grow up bilingual? According to comparative data analysis it was found, that the children of the surveyed Tanzanian-Austrian families grew up monolingual, the children of Tanzanian-Serbian and Tanzanian-Romanian families bilingual until they enter kindergarten, then trilingual. The circumstances influencing this result are the level of language proficiency of the German language by the Tanzanian fathers, the effects of individual language history of the Tanzanian fathers on the language use in their families, the quantitative time the fathers spend with their children and the fact that the fathers are speakers of the minority language (Kiswahili), not the mothers.