This paper examines the foci of research on Central European languages (German, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, Croatian, and Slovene) and their convergence. It summarises the orientation of the research on this topic, illuminates the current shift in the orientation and outlines some propositions regarding its future orientation.
Several main domains of the research are distinguished: the structural domain, the lexical domain, the phraseological domain, and the domain of language contact and language policy. In the section on structural domain, a bibliographical overview on the topic of the idea of the Central European linguistic area (also called the Danube Sprachbund) is provided.