My Language Has More Words Than Yours!

In the comments section, James Schipper comments on the notion that English has more words than, say, Swedish:

Measuring the number of words in a language isn’t very scientific. What is a word? Is it anything that is separated by empty space? If so, then the more words are written as one, the more words there are in a language. Bookkeeper and steamship would be separate words but book publisher and passenger ship would not be. I’m currently reading a book by your Swedish colleague Mikael Parkvall about language myths. One myth that he discusses is Engelska har fler ord än svenska = English has more words than Swedish. He says that no evidence is ever provided for the claim, except to say that English has borrowed a lot. He mocks an English chauvinist who states that English has over 1 million words and French about 100,000 and who then says that English borrowed a lot from other languages, especially from French. In other words, English is rich and French poor because English borrowed a lot from French. As Parkvall sarcastically notes, the English must have borrowed a lot of words from the French without ever paying them back. He says that if all the works of Shakespeare are run through a computer program designed to count words, the result is 29,066. However, if all the works of August Strindberg are run through the same program, the result is 119,288 words! I can easily see why the Swedish count is so high. In Swedish, all nominal compounds are written as one word and the definite article is a suffix. On top of that, the genitive is used more than in English. We have for instance bil = car, bilen = the car, bilar = cars, bilarna, the cars, bils = of a car, bilens = of the car, bilars = of cars, bilarnas = of the cars, bilolycka = car accident, bilägare = car owner, bilmekaniker = car mechanic, bilparkering = car parking, bilbälte = seat belt, etc. How can a computer or anybody else decide how many of these are separate words or not? When the French language had a lot of prestige, people were saying that it was exceptionally clear. Now that English is very prestigious, we keep hearing that it is exceptionally rich. In any case, languages that have borrowed a lot are not uncommon. Moreover, the more a language borrows, the greater the probability that the borrowed words simply displace native words, in which case no enrichment takes place.

I read somewhere that someone said that Dutch has 4 million words! On my other site, we do a lot of translations of posts to other languages. So far, we have done Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Serbo-Croatian, German, French, Bulgarian, Romanian, Polish and Korean. So far, I have had few complaints from translators along the lines of “we don’t have a word or  phrase in our language for that English word or phrase.” Cases of having to use an English word or phrase because no translation was available are few. However, Korean did some to stick out. I am told by Korean speakers that Korean has few to no synonyms. I knew a young Korean-American woman who was stunned by the number of synonyms in English. The Koreans think the plethora of US synonyms is somewhere  between ridiculous and idiotic. Why do you need more than one word with the same meaning? Norwegian, a very small language in terms of speakers, struck me as being particularly word-rich for some reason. An interesting question is how many words a typical primitive language had or has. A study was recently done on one of the Araucanian languages of South America, Yaghan. A recent dictionary of Yaghan listed around 30,000 words! The author made the supposition that your typical primitive language pre-contact had around 30,000 words. No one knows for sure. I worked for 1½ years on a California Indian language called Chukchansi. It’s true that they lacked words for a lot of modern concepts, many more obscure body parts, and many fine gradations of meaning. The speakers were all elderly and spoke English well. The last near-monolingual speaker died around 1965. She spoke English, but it was broken English. These speakers are helpful for a language. I heard from people who knew this woman that she had coined many Chukchansi borrowings and calques for many words having to do with modern living. When the last of the monolingual or near monolingual speakers die, your small language may get in bad shape. Calques and proper borrowings wedded to the phonology of the receptive language will simply disappear. We have many speakers of a SE Asian language called Hmong around here. It has millions of native speakers, but I understand that it lacks many words for modern concepts, even though there large number of monolinguals to near monolinguals around here – older people, especially women. I don’t understand why they don’t borrow English words or engage is calques or word-formations. The Hmong have an interesting cultural concept – if you are over 40, they say that you are too old to learn a foreign language. Hence, a lot of the older Hmong, especially the women, simply do not even try to learn English here in the US.

Cool Neo-Latin Websites

Repost from the old site. Forgive me a bit while I trip off into obscure Romance linguistics here for a bit, but I’m really getting off on this little journey. Here is the website for La Quotidiana, an online and printed daily newspaper in the Romansch language. This is the closest Romance language of all to Latin itself. Below are a couple of websites entirely in the Ladin language. Ladin is spoken in northeastern Italy, in the Eastern Alps. The specific range is called the Dolomites. Ladin is a weird-looking language. At first you think it’s French, then…no, it can’t be. Wait, it’s Italian, no, not quite. You keep thinking Romanian, but that’s wrong too. The one thing that keeps hitting you is that it looks so much like Classic Latin. Noeles.net is said to be the only online Ladin newspaper. Ladins da Friul is even better. It’s also entirely in Ladin, but it has lots of really cool photos. The people in this region are isolated in small mountain valleys, wear strange but fascinating traditional garb including wide-rimmed hats, have sloped roofs on the buildings with Swiss clocks on the outside, and seem to be very, very deeply Catholic. The people have interesting features and look more Germanic or Slavic than anything else. Lots of blond and red hair and blue and green eyes. There seems to be a deep tradition of scholarly endeavors and a general serious, even ponderous nature. These are not the happy go lucky Italians of the South. Traditional racial science classed the Europeans in this area as “Dinarics.” A gallery of Dinarics is here. It’s from a horrible proto-Nazi book by Hans F.K. Gunther, but the photos are pretty interesting. Employment seems to be mostly tourism now, but it looks as if some small farming, especially wine grapes, logging and handicrafts such as woodcarving still employ some folks. It doesn’t seem to be the sort of place one gets rich, but you get the feeling that people in the Dolomites really don’t care about getting rich. That’s a good set of values! Modern, sophisticated White people who don’t give a damn about getting rich. Persistence of small languages in Europe is associated with isolation, rural areas, poor economics, “backwardness,” deep religious values and regular churchgoing, and employment in traditional industries. In these isolated regions, speakers of small languages continue to marry their own kind – they don’t breed with outsiders too much. You also get the impression that many folks here spend their whole lives in one small village. I recall an anecdote where a writer was in a small Scottish village and an old-timer informed that he was moving for the first time in his life. “Oh?” asked the writer. “Where?” He was moving across the street. Ladin has 30,000 speakers and Romansch has 35,000. These are cultured, intelligent, educated Europeans, yet they are still speaking small languages that don’t have a lot of use in our multicultural world. I wonder what it must feel like to speak one of these small languages? There is probably not a lot to read in your small language. But in the case of Romansch and Ladin, probably almost all speakers also speak Italian and/or German at least, so if they want to do a lot of reading, there’s tons of German and Italian stuff out there. These small languages are often called “the language of the hearth and home.” They are spoken with family and friends, in small towns and villages, on the street and in shops. In some rural or more isolated areas, they are spoken at work. But in the wider world, a larger language is used. In modern times, the fate of the language lies with the younger generation. If they see the small language as having little value in our modern world, they will fail to use it or even learn it and will eventually lose the tongue. There are also problems with immigrants moving into the area who are not interested in learning some small language. Due to poor economics, a lot of speakers of small languages emigrate out of their home region to big cities. Eventually, many of them lose their native language. Media for small tongues is a constant problem, and it’s one reason I’m a socialist. These languages usually need some sort of funding by the state as the wonderful market just can’t see any profit in a radio or TV station broadcasting in some small tongue. So the state typically funds newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, etc. Advertising is another problem. You can put up signs in your small language and try to sell to speakers, but outsiders won’t be able to read them. So bilingual signage is often used. Education is always a sticky issue. With the larger minority tongues, there are often lessons in the language available through various grades of school. With the bigger ones, you can also opt to use the minority tongue as a language of instruction, as long as you take courses in the national language every year. Shortages of quality schoolbooks and other learning materials are typical problems, along with teachers fluent in the language. Recent decades have seen revivals throughout Europe in most of the small tongues. Here are a couple of websites in the much larger Friulian language, with 800,000 speakers. It’s close to Ladin and Romansch. Lenghe.net looks quite thorough. The Radio Onde site is also pretty nice. Friulian looks like it is getting quite a web presence, probably due to the high number of speakers. Radio and TV stations and printed press costs money, but websites are a lot cheaper. Maybe the web is going to be savior of a lot of small tongues.

Is India a Democracy?

A commenter asks me to read a news article today quoting neoliberal corporatist shill Barack Obama saying that India is a “thriving democracy.” I suppose compared to places like the Arab World, Iran, most of Africa, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Indonesia, Brazil and Paraguay, it’s a relatively democratic place, considering the nightmarish conditions of your average Third World shithole country, an assemblage that India is a part of. First of all, I would like to commend the commenter for his interest in democracy, provided it is sincere. Is it? Do high caste Hindus really want a democracy in India? When in human history have upper class elites ever supported democracy? Leaving that aside, the notion that Indian democracy should safeguard what it has and build on it is a noble one. India’s handling of the language question was a superb showcase of democracy, especially compared to the utter failure of neighbors like Myanmar, Pakistan and Nepal on the language question. India’s handling of the language issue, after a false start, was a par exemplar for the Third World. Let us give credit where it is due! I acknowledge that India is a relatively democratic place. But let’s face it, at the rural level, India is not very democratic and never has been, possibly ever in its entire blighted history. Rural India is a horrid dictatorship of high caste thugs and their private armies. They have the state, cops and courts on their side, and peaceful protest is useless. This is after all why the Maoists took up guns in the first place, after decades of futile peaceful protest. Almost all of the Congressmen in India are known criminals – thieves who have stolen typically millions of dollars. My understanding is that peaceful demos are regularly attacked by police. Is this true or not? And there is some pretty nasty stuff going on Kashmir. Young men being abducted off the street, tortured and murdered, then dropped on the side of the road. Their crime? Throwing rocks I guess. Hindu nationalist gangs regularly run rampant through India’s cities and rural areas, threatening, beating and even murdering Christians and Muslims, burning down their property and even their villages. They have the full support of the local Hindu police and state in these actions. How is this democracy? Here in the US, rural America is not ruled by a dictatorship of upper class thugs. The vast majority of Congress are not obvious thieves and criminals. The bribery that goes on 100 million times a day in India is a crime in the US. In Indian state hospitals, you either bribe the doctors to take care of your sick relative, or they will leave them to die. What’s so “democratic” about that? What good is my marching off to vote once every few years if I have to bribe state doctors not to kill my relative? Good Lord. At Indian universities, Dalits have their own gangs of thugs. Professors are threatened to pass on Dalit students with good grades. If they do not comply, they are beaten or worse. Hence, India’s education system is largely a joke, its degrees watered down with threats, fake marks and mass bribery. In the wonderful Indian democracy, we have recently heard that most large Indian newspapers are charging politicians for favorable coverage. No bribes to journalists, and you get negative stories. Pay off the Fourth Estate and expect plenty of nice fat puff pieces.We have not even descended that far here in the US yet, and we’ve sunk pretty low. This is democratic? How is it democratic that “supporters” of the Maoists are regularly beaten, tortured, raped and murdered? Exactly what crime have they committed? Can you cite the crime that says it is illegal to be a “supporter” of the Maoists? What does it mean to be a “supporter?” Can you spell it out for me please? If it’s illegal to be a Maoist supporter, why can’t you just arrest them and put them on trial? If it’s a crime deserving of death to be a Maoist “supporter” (Define please), why should the Maoists not have a right to kill ever government “supporter,” whatever that means? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, no? My understanding is that journalists who merely report on Maoist rebels are now being accused of violating Emergency Laws. For instance, Arundhati Roy is being threatened with arrest by the high caste criminal gangsters who run Chattisargh. Please tell me exactly what crimes Mrs. Roy has committed in writing in her articles. Specify the precise laws she violated, how and why. Say I want to go to India as a journalist. Explain to me, if I plan to write about Maoists, how it is I can do so without violating the law. Explain what the laws are and how we journalists can somehow not run afoul of them. Thanks! Meantime, I will have to think over that “Indian democracy” bit just a little.

The Perils of Late Immigration

My mother had a friend named Edna. Late in life, around age 40, she moved out of her mother’s house, got married for the first time, went off to live with the guy on his big estate, then divorced in a few years when it all blew up.

After that, she went on a lifelong bender. Prior to that, she had hardly touched a drink. She died sometime in the past decade. My Mom wasn’t even all that sad; she figured it was inevitable. What an odd life she led. What strange secrets did she hide from the world that sent her tossing adrift on life’s rough seas? What had happened in that strange and short marriage? What makes a teetotaler hit the bottle at 40 and never put it down until she’s dead?

Anyway, Edna was Norwegian, or her mother was at any rate. Her mother had come from Norway to the US. At some point, the father died, and there was no one to speak Norwegian to anymore.

One time, her mother was in a state of linguistic existential despair. She was in a prison of language, with a No Exit sign on the door.

“I haf forgotten all of my Norvegian!” she moaned. “Ent I never lernt gut the English!”

A person without a language is a sad thing. A person who once had a language, and now has none, has lost the next best thing to life itself. You’re naked and crippled at the same time, probably for the rest of your life.

What to do? Pour a drink, no?

Sociolinguistic Problem

Reader James Schipper sent this to me:

Let’s take Peter, Paul and Patrick.

Peter spent the first 6 years of his live in an exclusively German-speaking environment and after that in a totally English-speaking environment. He is now 26 years old.

Paul spent the first 6 years of his life in a totally English-speaking environment, then 6 years in an exclusively German-speaking environment and after that in a completely English-speaking environment again. He is now 32.

Patrick spent the first 12 years among unilingual English-speakers, then 6 years in a totally German-speaking environment and after that in a completely English-speaking environment again. He is now 38.

So, all 3 men were immersed in German during 6 years, and all 3 have been away from German for 20 years. Assuming that the 3 men have the same IQ and linguistic ability, which one would know the most German today, do you think? I would bet on Patrick.

Actually, I would argue Peter, Paul and then Patrick. Nothing beats early exposure, and the earlier the better.

I have an interesting story along those lines. Two women were raised in a Chinese-speaking environment as very young girls, then transitioned somehow to an English-speaking environment. They somehow picked up enough Chinese to be fluent.

As adults, they went to China and were able to speak Chinese well with the Chinese people. They could also understand the spoken Chinese around them. But people kept laughing at them. The Chinese said that their Chinese was good Chinese all right, except that it was what they call “baby talk.” The girls had only learned how to speak Chinese like a little kid speaks it, not as an adult speaks it.

Cool story!

The Roots of Fascism in Pakistan and Sri Lanka

Great article from one of my favorite websites, The Left Coaster. It’s basically the left wing of the Democratic Party in the US. They sure don’t agree with the idiot 5

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. The conflicts in Pakistan and Sri Lanka have their roots in the fascist language policies of the state. India,on the other hand, for all its faults, has had a good language policy from the very start. English was chosen as the national language, and each state chose its own majority language as the language of the state. To communicate with the central governments, the states would use English. Much ethnic tension and violence was actually defused in India by this very progressive policy.

Pakistan, insanely, chose the language of only

Sri Lanka was worse. Sinhalese, the language of 7

The genocide reached a peak this spring when the state wiped out the remains of the Tamil Tigers, and slaughtered 100,000 Tamil civilians at the same time. The media in the West and India did nothing but stand up and cheer during the whole Tamil Holocaust. Sickening. Now the war’s over, but tens of thousands of Tamils are in concentration camps.

Sinhalese settler-colonists, like the Jews of Israel, have invaded Tamil lands to throw the Tamils off, steal their land and confiscate it for Sinhalese settlers. Not one word of this in the filthy Western media, who apparently have never met a fascist they didn’t like. Both political parties support the fascist Sri Lankan state.

On a worldwide scale, only the Left has managed to peep in protest over the Sri Lankan fascist genocide. This is one reason I’m a Leftist. We’re the only honorable people left on the globe.

An Evaluation of the Nepalese Maoists

Repost from the old site.

The news has been pretty confusing for a long time coming out of Nepal. The Nepalese Maoists laid down their guns and gave up armed struggle for a variety of reasons, after a brutal civil war in which 13,000 people were killed, 10,000 of them by the security forces.

The Maoists decided to try to seek power by peaceful means. They seem to have won 4

One of the first things this new government did was to get rid of the Nepalese monarchy. The next agenda was to call for a Constituent Assembly, apparently in order to rewrite the Constitution. This was their program toward the end of the war – an end to monarchy, a constituent assembly, a true multiparty democracy with the right to dissent.

They were since thrown out of power by what boiled down to a military coup. They quit the government in disgust after that, and have since been trying to bring down the coup government that sprung up in their place, with no success. Incredibly enough, one of the parties that participated in the coup is a Marxist-Leninist Communist party which has completely sold out and is now pushing neoliberalism, alliance with US imperialism and an alliance with India, which has always had neocolonial designs on Nepal.

I’ve been reading quite a few interview with these guys, especially with their leader, Prachandra. He has taken the position that Marxists need to toss out Stalin, Lenin and even Mao, or at least not follow them to the letter. He says that they all had some good ideas too, but Marxism has moved beyond them. In particular, he takes the fascinating position that modern Marxists should support full democracy.

His argument is that in Nepal, the Maoists’ program will be so popular that they hope to get re-elected over and over. It is true that this party has managed to get huge support on the ground. He also says that socialism has to be completely democratic, with civil liberties for all.

One of Prachandra’s arguments is that with the world in such a death grip of imperialism these days, Communists have to adjust themselves to that reality and try to make some sort of peace with imperialism, at least in order to survive.

This has caused quite a rift in the International Communist Movement. Most non-Maoists haven’t had much to say about it, but the debate in Maoist circles has never quit. There are supporters of the CPN-M and opponents of them.

The opponents take the line that the CPN-M should not take part in parliamentary politics (“parliamentary cretinism”, according to Lenin) and instead should have a dictatorship of the proletariat and a people’s republic. Prachandra seems to take the position that the dictatorship of the proletariat is through.

If it really is over, we can say goodbye to some of the harshest criticism of Communists for being cruel and wicked dictators who denied basic civil liberties and deliberately killed millions of people. I feel this is an albatross off the neck of the movement. Capitalism does such a great job of killing people as it is. Why should Communists be killing anyone once they get into power. Leave the killing to the capitalists. They do it so well.

The CPN-M seems now to have split into two lines – a hardline faction wanting to go straight to a people’s republic (And dictatorship of the proletariat?) and the more moderate faction surrounding Prachandra and his followers.

Prachandra has made some disturbingly pro-imperialist statements, including saying he wanted to work with the World Bank and the IMF. But maybe in today’s Nepal, if you blow off the World Bank and the IMF, you are screwed.

The people around Prachandra also want a positive relationship with China, and have taken tours to China to see Chinese socialism (or socialism with Chinese characteristics) in action.

The hardline Maoist position that China has reverted to capitalism is not correct. Chinese villagers still live much better than Nepalese villagers, and the differences are in large part due to the achievements of Chinese socialism. The countryside still retains a cooperativist and collectivist nature, and in general, private ownership of farmland is not yet allowed, although this may be about to change.

This article from a couple of years ago shows us just how much the Maoists have achieved in Nepal in the course of their revolution.

At the time, CPNM controlled 8

In an extremely sexist nation, the Maoist army had a very large number of female fighters – 4

Prior to the revolution, land could not support the people, but due to the changes instituted by the Maoists, now it does. Previously, men had to migrate to other areas to work at day labor to survive.

The party has placed solar panels in many villages to wire them up for electricity, and has set up seven party radio stations that broadcast in different languages. Language rights is one thing that Communists have generally pushed better than most groups.

Nepali is the language of the feudal upper class (yes, Nepal still has a feudal to semi-feudal land tenure system) and languages other than Nepali are banned in Nepal for official purposes such as education. The Maoists have instituted mother tongue education and literacy classes. Literacy figures in Nepal are horrible – below 5

The Maoists have re-evaluated the many long-held Marxist tenets and are calling for a radical re-evaluation in Marxist thinking. Here’s hoping they succeed.

English Attacking Bahasa Indonesia in Indonesia

English is the global destroyer, taking out native languages here and there, right and left, over there and over here. I’ve never heard of it damaging actual national languages yet.

Looks like it’s going to town on Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) somewhat. Pretty weird when people in either speaking the national language poorly or not at all. Actually, it ridiculous. It’s like Ireland all over again, this time shamrocks in Bali.

AAVE, Ebonics, Etc.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=228fq9rietk&feature=player_embedded]

Do any of you have the foggiest idea of what this guy’s saying? I swear to God, he’s speaking a foreign language. There’s no way he’s speaking the same language I am.

AAVE = African American Vernacular English

The guy seems like a real asshole. Practically a caricature of your typical Black ghetto scumbag.

Two years after the video was shot, Corey Lamar Beecher (the man in the video) was arrested and charged with Trespassing and Resisting Arrest. One month previous, he was arrested and charged with Grand Theft Auto. You gotta figure that anyone who talks like that is essentially unemployable at any legal occupation. He seems to have a promising future in store for him.

Yet More Romance Intelligibility Figures

From here.

I happen to agree with these figures. The figures involve the intelligibility of various Romance languages, spoken and written, for speakers of Spanish.

Intelligibility for Spanish speakers, oral: 7

Written: 9

As you can see, the figures are much higher for written than spoken language. This makes a lot of sense. With my fluent Spanish and some knowledge of Portuguese, French and Italian, I can pick up a fair amount of the written text of any Romance language.

Orally though, I’m typically pretty lost. The best ones are those that are closest to Spanish, such as Andalucian dialect, Aragonese, Asturian and Galician. Leonese is a lot different, heading towards Portuguese. You get to Catalan and Occitan and I start having lots of problems. Portuguese is way harder than you might think, even with my rudimentary Portuguese. Standard Italian as spoken slowly by say a documentary narrator is a bit better.  Street Italian is nearly useless to me, as is Spoken French, Romansch, Romanian, Italian dialects and hard Andalucian.

It’s very interesting that Spanish speakers can understand Galician better than they can Portuguese, but it makes sense. After all, Galicia split off from Portugal long ago and came under the influence of Castillian. I am not sure which Galician they are referring to here. There is a soft Galician that is used on Galician TV which has very heavy Castillian influence. Even I can pick it up pretty well. But there is a hard Galician of the street and the rural areas that is much harder to understand.

The figure for Catalan is much lower than for Galician because Catalan has so much French influence. Look at the dismal figure for spoken French and you can see why Spanish speakers have a hard time with it.

2

I would agree that Standard Italian, especially spoken slowly by a professional speaker, is much easier to understand than many Italian dialects, which are actually spoken languages. I’ve seen them on Youtube and I can’t make out a single word.

With my Spanish, my figures for written intelligibility of Romance are not as high as those above, but I’m not really fluent as far as reading Spanish goes. I’m a lot better at speaking it and hearing it. Others have given much lower figures than the one above for Spanish speakers reading Galician, but it probably improves very quickly in a short period of time.

Mutual Intelligibility As a Scientific Concept For Dividing Language from Dialect

I have suggested previously that intelligibility testing is the best, and really the only, way to scientifically attempt to divide languages from dialects.

Dividing based on intelligibility is a more scientific concept to the dialect/language concept than the sociolinguistic or political concepts currently used that have resulted in chaos surrounding the language/dialect question.

The resulting chaos has caused linguists to throw up their hands. Many now take the weird and soft science position that there is no way to tell a language from a dialect. This means that English and Mandarin may well be dialects of one language or California English and Massachusetts English are possibly separate languages. Make sense?

Focusing merely on intelligibility and nothing else turns the language/dialect question from its current senselessness towards a more solidly scientific basis.

There are other ways to distinguish language from dialect, but these just make things messier.

One way is structural divergence. Structural divergence is fairly well correlated with intelligibility, but not completely. Some divergent lects are quite intelligible, for instance, Turkish and Gaguaz. If you split structurally divergent yet intelligible languages, you run into the strange situation where speakers of two completely different languages can understand each other perfectly.

Dividing languages on sociological or, worse, political grounds is almost thoroughly anti-scientific. You run into odd cases, such as with Galician and Mirandese, where people of two intelligible lects wish to insist that they speak different languages in order to cynically acquire state funds and recognition, or because they dislike the other group, or maybe live in a different country than the other group.

You also run into odd cases like various unintelligible Mayan languages of Guatemala who insist that they all speak dialects of one language because this is the way they have always referred to these lects, or in order to preserve the unity of the language. In this case, you run into the bizarre case of speakers of two different dialects of a single language who can’t understand each other at all. If they can’t understand each other, who says they are speaking the same language?

Political reasons are much worse. States typically deny that minority languages spoken within their borders are languages in order to preserve the unity of the state and ward off fears of separatism and ethnic conflict. That linguists acquiesce to such blatantly fascist demands with a shrug of the shoulders is disturbing. States such as Sweden have recently engaged in gross manipulation of the ISO code process in order to deny language rights to minority tongues. It is disturbing that SIL caved in to the demands of the Swedish state so easily.

All in all, intelligibility is really the only way to go, and avoids all of these other anti-scientific minefields. A So if Ethnologue are mad splitters, so are the specialist authors themselves. The attacks on SIL and Ethnologue are poorly informed and typical of excessive emotionalism and fanaticism that has overtaken Linguistics recently and threatens to make it into yet another joke soft science social science. It is interesting that the same wild-eyed screamers who oppose lumping in genetic classification (opposition to say, Penutian and Altaic) are the same snarks who sneer that Ethnologue excessively splits.

The one thing that they have in common is the typical soft science dodge that we can’t prove much of anything about anything. We can’t prove what’s a language and what’s a dialect, so leave it alone. We can’t prove any more language families due to time depth or the weather or whatever, so let’s stop making any more families until we sit down, relax for 20-30 years over cups of coffee and get this stuff all sorted out.

The other main attack on Ethnologue is bizarre. It’s based on the fact that Ethnologue is run by Christian missionaries who translate the Bible into many languages. There are many atheists, usually very leftwing atheists, in the academic field of Linguistics, and it’s clear that their sneering contempt for SIL is based on the fact that they are unapologetically religious.

The bizarre insinuation is also made that since they Bible-translating missionaires, they could not possibly be competent linguists. How strange. Why can’t one be a Bible-translating missionary and a linguist at the same time? And other than that this is an obvious ad hominem attack, what’s so bad about being religious anyway? This sort of condemnation reminds one of the former USSR. Surely being a religious believer should not disqualify one from being a competent linguist!

Another strange and ultra-leftwing attack on SIL is that they somehow are CIA spies of some sort. I’m not competent to respond to that attack.

However, some Indian organizations in Latin America have protested the organization and tried, sometimes successfully, to get them banned from their nations, usually on grounds of trying to convert Indians to Christianity. Somehow the fact that SIL was banned from various backwards, dysfunctional banana republics for “trying to convert the Indians” is evidence that they can’t possibly do competent Linguistics.

How bizarre. Competent scholars are regularly banned from silly nations for sorts of strange political reasons that have nothing to do with scholarship. Once again, linguists appear to be siding with fascist-like states and opposing scholars.

Harold Hammarström, a man working in computational linguistics, which I would hope is about as scientific as our field gets, offers some hope to steer our field back to a more scientific path and reclaim some territory from the soft science mush-heads.

References

Hammarström, H. 2005. Robert LindsayPosted on Categories Dialectology, Linguistics, Sociolinguistics2 Comments on Mutual Intelligibility As a Scientific Concept For Dividing Language from Dialect

Yet Another Scandinavian Intelligibility Study

We’ve reviewed several of these studies before, and this subject seems to send a lot of Scandinavians up the wall for some reason. Especially Swedes are quite insistent that Swedish and Norwegian are a single language. They get pretty furious when people say that they can’t completely understand each other. A new study I found adds some weight to that notion. Here are the results of a study of Scandinavian students on an intelligibility test of other Scandinavian languages:

                  Swedish  Norwegian Danish
Norwegians        89                 75
Swedes                     83        24
Finnish Swedes             75        14
Danes             53       57

As you can see, Norwegian and Swedish are almost dialects of a single language. In this test, Swedish-Norwegian intelligibility was 8

Norwegian-Danish intelligibility was lower, but still high, at 6

Swedish-Danish intelligibility was lowest of all at 3

Here are the results of a study of “Dutch” students on an intelligibility test of other “Dutch” languages:

                         Dutch  Frisian  Afrikaans
Dutch                           55       62
Frisians                                 67
South Africans           44     25

The intelligibility of Dutch and Afrikaans is much exaggerated. Swedish and Norwegian are much closer. Combined intelligibility of Dutch and Afrikaans is only 5

The intelligibility of Frisian and Dutch is also much exaggerated. Here, Dutch understood 5

References

Gooskens, Charlotte. 2007. The Contribution of Linguistic Factors to the Intelligibility of Closely Related Languages. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 28:6, 445-467.

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A Reclassification of the Dutch Language

Warning! This post is quite long – it runs to 126 pages. Frequently updated – last updated May 24, 2015.

Where the Dutch language begins and where it ends is an important question. Ethnologue splits Low Franconian-Low Saxon (whatever that is) into 15 languages – Flemish, Dutch, Zeelandic, Afrikaans, Achterhoeks, Drents, Gronings, Plautdietsch, Sallands, Low Saxon, Stellingwerfs, Twents, Veluws, Westphalian and East Frisian Low Saxon. Instead of the confusing Low Franconian-Low Saxon, we will henceforth refer to the same as “Macro-Dutch.”

This treatment will lump together many of the Dutch Low Saxon lects as Dutch, put East Frisian Low Saxon into Dutch, put Westphalian and German Low Saxon into German, move Limburgish out of German to Dutch where it belongs, and create a dozen new Macro-Dutch languages.

An important question is the position of Frisian languages in all of this. Currently Ethnologue has them in Anglo-Frisian. Gooskens 2004 makes a good case that Frisian is better analyzed as Macro-Dutch than Anglo-Frisian based on Levenshtein distance. She is probably correct, but I am going to leave Frisian outside of Dutch until I can analyze it better.

Anyway, genetically, Frisian is a part of an Anglo-Frisian family (Gooskens 2004). However, Frisian has drifted far away from English due to massive influence from Dutch such that it now is closer to Dutch than the Scandinavian languages are to each other (Gooskens 2004). It depends on if you wish to analyze Frisian based on its genetic history or on which language it is closest to.

One thing that ought to be dispensed with immediately is the notion that German, Dutch, Flemish and Afrikaans are intelligible with each other. The truth is that Hochdeutsch speakers can at worst barely understand a word of any of them and at best have only Neither is German intelligible to Dutch speakers, even after 3-4 years of studying German. This even holds for Low German, which is often held to be intelligible with Dutch. It’s not, even after 3-4 years of study and even to speakers of Dutch-German border lects in the Netherlands that are presumably closer to Low German than the rest of Dutch. After 3-4 years of German, Dutch speakers have only 5

Nor are Frisian and Dutch mutually intelligible, another common claim. They have combined intelligibility of 6

The Dutch either have a nationalist complex or are possible simply ignorant or indifferent on the question of what constitutes “Dutch.” They take a very conservative, nationalist view of the language question. To the Dutch, every language spoken in the Netherlands and some spoken outside of it is Dutch. Brabantian, Flemish, Veluws, Afrikaans, Limburgish, Bergish, Guelderish, Kleverlandish and Dutch Low Saxon are often all considered to be dialects of Dutch.

To be fair to the Dutch, I’m making a similar claim here, but instead of calling all of the above dialects of Dutch, I will call them separate languages under an umbrella called Macro-Dutch which subsumes them all.

The Dutch do recognize Limburgs and Low Saxon as minority languages.

Spain, Germany, Italy, France and Sweden do not recognize the languages under the umbrellas of Macro-Spanish, Macro-German, Macro-Italian, Macro-French and Macro-Swedish umbrella.

Spain does not recognize Asturian, Aragonese or Extremaduran. France does not recognize the many langues d’oil. Italian does not recognize Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Venetian, Emigliano, Romano, Neapolitan or Sicilian. Sweden does not recognize Scanian, Gutnish, Jamska or Dalecarlian. Germany does not recognize Bavarian, Swabian, High Franconian, Low German, Westphalian, Upper Saxon, Ripuarian or Pfaelzisch.

Probably the reasons that these languages are not recognized is due to the national consolidationist efforts behind a standard language and the fears of splintering the standard into substandard forms and the separatism that may ensue. So the Dutch are simply following in standard European modernist tradition.

This has resulted in problems and violations of language rights for speakers of other Low Franconian lects. For instance, Zeelandic is definitely a separate language, not a dialect of Dutch. Zeelandic speakers petitioned to have their language recognized as a minority language nine years ago, but the Dutch government has refused to grant this request.

The truth may disturb many Dutch speakers. For Dutch is not just the 15 languages confusingly listed in Ethnologue; it is actually 30 separate languages, which I will attempt to demonstrate below.

Method: Various “Dutch” and “Low Franconian” lects were analyzed on the basis of mutual intelligibility with Standard Dutch to see if they warranted treatment as separate languages. A rough guide was >9

Other lects in Ethnologue’s treatment were analyzed to determine whether they belonged in “Macro-German” or “Macro-Dutch.” Westphalian and German Low Saxon were moved to Macro-German; the rest were moved to Macro-Dutch.

Anecdotal reports and scientific studies were reviewed, and native speaker informants were interviewed. Where intelligibility estimates are controversial, scientific intelligibility studies could always settle the matter. The creole was not counted.

Results: Ethnologue’s Low Franconian-Low Saxon was expanded from 15 into 35 languages based on mutual intelligibility. Below, separate languages are in bold, while dialects are in italics. Dutch, like Arabic, Italian, German, Chinese and so many others, is a macrolanguage.

Discussion: This work is merely a working hypothesis intended to be discussed and criticized by scholars and interested parties. I would be interested in criticism on a peer review basis. Criticism must be both constructive and friendly, otherwise it will be summarily rejected. This is very much a work in progress.

Dutch Creoles

In recent years, there were five Dutch creoles spoken in Indonesia, Guyana and the US Virgin Islands. It appears that four of the five are extinct, and one is barely alive.

Berbice Creole Dutch is barely alive, spoken in Guyana by only four speakers. There are another 15 with limited competence. It is spoken in the Berbice River region of the country. About 1/3 of the words and most of the morphology is from the Nigerian Bantu language Izon, a language with 1 million speakers. The rest of the lexicon is mostly from Dutch. 1

Low Franconian Languages and Dialects

Standard Dutch, Algemeen Nederlands or AN (henceforth, AN) is a major world language spoken by all 15 million residents of the Netherlands and an additional 7 million speakers elsewhere. Although one might suspect that Dutch goes all the way back to the oldest Old Franconian, actually, the lects closest to Old Franconian are French Flemish, West Flemish and Zeeland Flemish. Dutch proper seems to have broken off sooner.

Dutch has many dialects, but they are all more or less intelligible. There are two forms of Dutch in general – Hollandic and Brabantian. Both are part of AN. Modern Belgian Dutch is much more Brabantian than Hollandic.

There is also Brabantian Netherlands Dutch, a dialect of Netherlands Dutch, and Brabantian Belgian Dutch, a dialect of Belgian Dutch or Vlaams (Grondelaers 2009).

Surinamese Dutch is a Dutch dialect, easily intelligible with AN, that is spoken in Suriname. It has 280,000 speakers, or 6

Netherlands Dutch is the Dutch dialect spoken in the Netherlands, differentiating with Belgian Dutch. It is widely understood throughout the country, especially the Standard Dutch variety of this dialect that has been popularized in the Netherlands since the 1960’s.

Netherlands Brabantian Dutch is a Dutch dialect spoken in North Brabant Province in the Netherlands (Grondelaers 2009). It is easily intelligible with AN. This dialect has about 2.45 million speakers.

Belgian Brabantian Dutch is the same thing as the Verkavelingsvlaams described below. It is spoken in North Brabant Province and in Antwerp Province by about 3.4 million speakers. It is being replaced by French in Brussels, but it is still widely spoken elsewhere.

Stadsfries is a mixed dialect spoken in certain urban areas of Friesland such as the towns of Leeuwarden, Dokkum, Bolsward, Sneek, Stavoren, Harlingen and Franeker. Originally Frisian speakers, they gave up Frisian for Dutch about 500 years ago. The vocabulary is mostly Dutch with Frisian pronunciation. AN speakers can understand this dialect pretty easily. Lately it is seriously declining and has low prestige, hence it is becoming a sociolect spoken mostly by low-income people in the cities.

Snekers is a Stadsfries dialect spoken in the Friesland city of Sneker. It traces back to 1600 or so when locals abandoned West Frisian for Hollandic speech as an elite gesture, since Hollandic was not spoken much outside of the Holland Provinces. By 1800, the rest of the city had modeled their elitist behavior after the rich and the whole city spoke Snekers. It continued to be a highly valued speech until 1900. People kept speaking it a lot until WW2.

The disdain towards Frisian, seen as peasant speech, continues in many Snekers speakers to this day. In the 20th Century, many rural people moved to the city, and many foreigners moved there too. Snekers became a speech used only by Sneker natives among themselves. They spoke Dutch or sometimes Frisian to newcomers. Nowadays, Snekers is dying. The youth have taken it up, but they speak a watered down version that is probably intelligible to AN speakers.

Hollandic Dutch is the other large dialect of Dutch besides Brabantian. Hollandic is spoken in the provinces of North Holland and South Holland by about 6 million speakers. This dialect is intelligible with AN. Hollandic Dutch is the variety that is closest to AN. It is divided into two lects, North Hollandic Dutch and South Hollandic Dutch.

IJmuidens is a dialect spoken in by the lower classes in IJmuiden, the third largest port in the Netherlands, in North Holland. The dialect is probably readily intelligible with AN.

Haarlems is the dialect spoken in Haarlem in North Holland, especially by the lower classes. It does not differ much from Amsterdams or AN. This area has long had the reputation for being the place where the purest Dutch is spoken, although this is no longer true anymore. Nowadays, the purest Dutch is spoken in places like Dronten on the Dutch polders in the IJsselmeer.

Nijmeegs is a very interesting dialect spoken in the city of Nijmegen in eastern Gelderland. Although strictly speaking it should be a South Gulderish dialect, it has heavy Hollandic features such that it may well be intelligible to AN speakers. Until the late 1800’s, residents of the city were speaking a typical South Gulderish dialect. However, in the late 1800’s, the upper class of the city began speaking a Randstad dialect similar to Amsterdams and Haags.

The lower classes quickly began speaking the same dialect, and the traditional dialect of the city disappeared, as it was poorly valued anyway. Nijmeegs still has some East Brabantian, Limburgish and Achterhoeks features, but it also lacks many characteristic Limburgish and Brabantian features of surrounding dialects.

Gouds is a South Hollandic dialect spoken in the city of Gouda, 20 miles northeast of Rotterdam. In many ways it is similar to AN. With mass immigration and compulsory education in AN, the real Gouds is hardly heard anymore.

Rotterdams is the South Hollandic dialect spoken in the city of Rotterdam. It differs little from AN. This is because the standard for Hollandic dialects, dating back to 1600, was the Rotterdams dialect. Its influence spread throughout the region, first to the upper classes and then to the lower classes as they imitated the speech of the rich.

The Rotterdams dialect does have many unique features, mostly due the waves of immigrants who have come to the city, each bringing their own language which added to the Rotterdams dialect. In the 1800’s, there was a large influence from Brabantian and Zeelandic speakers. In the 1900’s, the influences have become more varied, as speakers of Arabic and the Papiamento or Surinamese creoles added their words to the mix. It is still heard throughout the Rotterdam region and in the cities of Spijkenisse, Hellevoetsluis and Capelle aan den IJssel to the east and southwest.

Bildts is a mixed Frisian-Dutch lect spoken in the Het Bildt, a polder region in Friesland northwest of Leeuwarden that dates back to the 1500’s. Many immigrants came from the South Holland area to this part of Friesland to help create the polders. Their South Hollandic lects mixed with the Frisian spoken by the local farm workers to create this interesting mixed dialect.

Intelligibility between Bildts and AN is not known, but in a dialect map published in 1974 showed Bildts the furthest of all from AN (Berns 1991). On the basis of that study, Bildts may indeed be a separate language, but better intelligibility data would be nice.

Midslands is a North Hollandic dialect, similar to Stadsfries, that is still spoken in on Terschelling Island off the coast of Friesland in the village of Midsland. It has Hollandic and Frisian influences. Intelligibility data is lacking.

Amelands is a another dialect like Midslands and Stadsfries. It has mostly Hollandic vocabulary with Frisian grammar. There are four villages on the island, each with their own dialect. Nevertheless, all dialects are intelligible with each other.

The dialect developed in the 1700’s when Hollandic migrants moved to the island, probably for trade, and the locals gave up their Frisian speech for Hollandic. The process was not complete, and Amelands was the result. It is still very widely used. 8

Westfries consists of two parts. One, the Westfries language, which consists of Island Westfries. And two, Land Westfries, which is part of the North Hollandic language.

Island Westfries or Eland Westfries is a major split in Westfries. This is spoken on the islands and former islands of Texel, Vlieland and Wieringen and on land in the city of Enkhuizen. Island Westfries has poor intelligibility with the more common Land Westfries due to its archaic character, hence it may be a separate language.

Wierings is an Island Westfries dialect spoken on the former island of Wieringen. It is very close to Tess, the dialect of Texel Island. Wierings is rapidly disappearing and is only spoken by the older generation. Younger people speak a weak Wierings which looks more like Land Westfries. There is a navy base on Wieringen, so many non-islanders have come to live there.

Tessels is an Island Westfries dialect spoken on the island of Texel in North Holland that is so different from the rest of Island Westfries that it must be a separate language. It is still widely spoken, especially in the rural areas, but it is not much spoken in the larger cities. There are different varieties of Tessels spoken in the towns of Oudeschild, De Cocksdorp, Den Hoorn and Oosterend. The dialects differ greatly, and speakers from different towns do not necessarily understand each other fully, hence intelligibility is somewhat marginal among the dialects.

North Hollandic is a language spoken in North Holland Province. It consists of the Land Westfries, Zaans and Waterlands dialects. The situation is confusing, as there is also North Hollandic Dutch, a dialect of AN.

Land Westfries is a dialect of North Hollandic Dutch, a major split in the Westfries language. This variety is less conservative and has been influenced more by Dutch. The more archaic varieties of Island Westfries have poor intelligibility with Land Westfries, hence it may be a separate language.

Kennemerlands is a North Hollandic Dutch lect spoken in Kennermerland around the cities of Haarlem and Beverwijk. It arose in the Middle Ages due to contact between Frisian speaking fishermen and speakers of North Hollandic Dutch. Towards the north, it looks more like Westfries and the Zaans dialect. It is best analyzed as a transitional dialect between North Hollandic and Westfries. It is unintelligible to AN speakers, and is apparently a separate language.

Durkers or Egmonds is a strange dialect, often analyzed as either Westfries or Kennemerlands, spoken on Egmond aan Zee in the north of North Hollands Province. In this treatment, we will analyze it as Kennemerlands. It is not intelligible with AN (Anonymous January 2010)

Zaans-Waterlands is a North Hollandic lect spoken in North Holland Province. It is composed of two dialects, Zaans and Waterlands.

Zaans is an archaic North Hollandic dialect spoken in the Zaan, an old settled and industrial area between Amsterdam and Haarlem. It is spoken in the city of Zandam and in the towns of Wormerveer, Krommenie and Zaandijk. It apparently arose out of Westfries. Zaans has difficult intelligibility with AN.

Waterlands is a Zaans-Waterlands dialect that is spoken between the Zaan and the Schokland due to fierce storms. The Schokland residents spoke a strange dialect called Schokkers which was basically a Low Saxon dialect similar to Urkers.

Markens is a very unusual Waterlands dialect that is spoken on the former island of Marken. It also received large input from the fleeing residents of Schokland. Markens is one of the most unusual dialects in the Netherlands and has been the object of many studies. It has difficult intelligibility with AN, but intelligibility with the rest of Waterlands is not known.

Markens appears to have a heavy base of Frisian or even Old Frisian. It appears to be undergoing dialect leveling under the pressure of the mass media and immigration, and young people typically do not speak pure Markens.

Goois is a North Hollandic dialect spoken in Het Gooi, a region in the far southeast of North Hollands. Cities in this region include Naarden, Bussum, Huizon, Blaricum, Laren and Hilversum. Opinions on this dialect are varied. One view is it is a Dutch-Low Saxon transition dialect, mostly in the far east of Blaricum, Laren and Hilversum. That would be transitional to West Veluws. This view sees the rest of the area as Hollandic. There is also influence from the Utrechts dialects. The dialect is still alive, especially in the three eastern cities discussed above.

South Hollandic is a lect spoken in South Hollandic Province. A similar situation is going on here as with Brabantian and North Hollandic. As there is Brabantian Dutch and North Hollandic Dutch and Brabantian and North Hollandic languages, so there is South Hollandic Dutch and the South Hollandic language. The South Hollandic language is mostly gone now, as dialect leveling has moved most of the dialects to South Hollandic Dutch. However, it remains alive in the form of the Strandhollands and East IJsselmonds dialects.

Aalsmeers is a dialect spoken in the city of Aalsmeer in southern North Holland near the border with South Holland. Traditionally, it was a Strandhollands dialect, but it has lost most of its Strandhollands features and is probably not a part of that group anymore. It has a similar genesis with the Strandhollands language, in that it was formed by immigrants from the Frisian-speaking north moving down to the area long ago.

However, due to geographical isolation (they were cut off on three sides by marshes or lakes and only accessible via a sliver of land) they were cut off from the rest of Strandhollands and the convergent evolution with it ended. There was also a group of Mennonites who came down from Friesland and settled in the area.

Immigrants probably kept speaking Frisian here longer than in other places. In general, this dialect is best seen as transitional between North and South Hollandic. The original Aalsmeers dialect is nearly extinct. Intelligibility data with AN is not known.

Strandhollands is a very conservative dialect of the Hollandic language spoken in the fishing villages in the area of Sheveningen and Katwijik aan Zee in the Holland Provinces. Intelligibility in general is marginal at best and hardly possible at worst between this lect and AN (Anonymous January 2010), hence it is a separate language.

This is a very archaic South Hollandic language that has preserved many old features, while the rest of South Hollandic behind the dunes has trended towards Hollandic Dutch. Strandhollands retains many features of Medieval Dutch. It is interesting that the standard dialect of The Hague is close nearby.

It emerged about 400 years ago and its provenance is obscure. Probably fishermen from elsewhere on the coast, such as Friesland and and the Zuiderzee moved into the area to take up fishing. The language has a strong Frisian substrate. Probably the isolation of the villages helped to keep the lect different from surrounding evolving lects.

The Strandhollands dialects become more intelligible with AN, in general, as one moves to the south. The least comprehensible ones are generally in North Holland Province. Intelligibility data between this and the rest of South Hollandic, especially East IJsselmonds, is needed.

Wijk aan Zee is a Strandhollands dialect spoken in the fishing village of Wijk aan Zee that has poor intelligibility with AN (Anonymous January 2010). The town is located west of Beverwijk.

Zandvoort is a Strandhollands dialect that is hardly comprehensible to AN speakers (Anonymous January 2010). It is spoken in Zandvoort on the coast west of Haarlem.

Noordwijks is a Strandhollands dialect spoken in the fishing village of Noordwijks an Zee in South Holland Province. Intelligibility with AN is somewhat marginal (Anonymous January 2010). Noordwijks is probably the easiest Strandhollands lect for AN speakers to understand.

Katwijks is a Strandhollands lect spoken in the fishing village of Katwijks an Zee in South Holland Province. It is based on an archaic version of Leids, the dialect of the city of Leiden. Katwijks, like Zandvoort and Wijk aan Zee to the north, is barely comprehensible to AN speakers (Anonymous January 2010).

Schevenings is a Strandhollands dialect spoken in the fishing village of Scheveningen in South Holland Province. It has marginal intelligibility with AN (Anonymous January 2010). This dialect is said to be based an archaic version of Haags, the dialect of The Hague.

Zoetermeers is a very divergent South Hollandic dialect spoken in the city of Zoetermeer 10 miles east of the Hague. This was always an isolated farming village, so it was not effected much by the trends effecting the Haags dialect a short while away. In the 1960’s, the population grew from 10,000 to 120,000 as immigrants flooded into the Hague region. Hence, only a few locals speak the dialect anymore.

Westhoeks is spoken in the Westhoek in northwest North Brabant. It’s a Hollandic dialect spoken in Brabant. No one is sure why. They are Protestants, and this may have something to do with it, but it’s more likely a case similar to Bildts, where many Hollandic speaking immigrants moved to the area after the polders were created in the 1600’s and afterward. Intelligibility with the rest of South Hollandic is not known.

Westhoeks is divergent enough from the rest of South Hollandic to be given its own category in many analyses. It has some influence from Dordts, the old dialect of Dordrect not far to the north.

Fijnaarts is a Westhoeks dialect spoken in the village of Fijnaart in North Brabant.

Dordts is a South Hollandic dialect spoken in the city of Dordrect that is intelligible with the rest of South Hollandic. It has heavy Zeelandic and Brabantian influences. In the 20th Century, it underwent dialect leveling under the influence of the much less divergent Rotterdams dialect in Rotterdam. The strongest Dordts is now heard in the center of the city.

IJsselmonds is a South Hollandic lect spoken south of Rotterdam on the old island of IJsselmond, now reclaimed from the sea. The former island can now be seen via satellite as #9 on this map. In general, it is south of Rotterdam between the Niewe Maas and the Spijkenisse Rivers. The region is now heavily industrial, particularly gone over to shipbuilding. The lect is quite a bit different from both AN and Rotterdams. It has two main variants, West and East IJsselmonds.

West IJsselmonds has come under severe Rotterdams influence and can hardly be heard in its pure form anymore. It is only barely alive in the town of Pernis.

East IJsselmonds is extremely divergent from AN and Rotterdams and cannot be understood outside the region. It has mostly undergone dialect leveling and in general is rarely heard. The youth speak a watered down version that is intelligible with AN. Only in the city of Hedrik-Ido-Ambrecht can the true lect be heard on an everyday basis. Given that it’s unintelligible outside the region, it may be a separate language. Intelligibility data between this and the rest of South Hollandic, especially Strandhollands, is needed.

Ambachts is the last remaining holdout of the East IJsselmonds language. This is a deeply conservative dialect, the most conservative of the language, such that the lect of one village may differ greatly from the next. It has striking influences from the Umbrechts-Alblasserwards dialect group to the east.

Baorendrechts is a deeply conservative East IJsselmonds dialect that is spoken in the city of Barendrecht. It has been mostly superseded by AN these days.

Bulessers is another deeply conservative East IJsselmonds dialect spoken in the city of Bolnes. It is almost extinct, under heavy pressure from AN.

Zwindrechts is an East IJsselmonds dialect spoken in Zwijndrecht. It has undergone serious dialect leveling due to the effects of industrialization but can still be heard, mostly in farmers. It has some Dordts influence.

Rekkarkeks is a South Hollandic lect spoken in the city of Ridderkerk, halfway between Rotterdam and Dordrect. This is a very unusual lect that is very different from AN. Hence is has poor to marginal intelligibility with AN, and thus, it may well be a separate language.

It is located just to the east of the East IJsselmonds language, hence its unusualness is probably due to its East IJsselmonds features. It is barely alive and has only a few speakers left. A diluted version is still quite alive. Intelligibility data with the East IJsselmonds language is urgently needed.

Hoekschewaards is a South Hollandic dialect spoken on a former island southwest of Dordrecht, between the Spijkenisse River and the Haringvliet Channel. The city of Numansdorp is located in this region. This dialect has strong IJsselmonds and Albasserwards tendencies. These are much stronger than the Dordts influences. It has three divisions, West Hoekschewaards, East Hoekschewaards and Gravendeel. It is still very much alive, though it is coming under heavy influence from Rotterdams and AN.

West Albasserwards is spoken in the Western part of the Albasserwards, east of Rotterdam about halfway to the Utrecht border. The dialect is dying out in many areas, and there is little interest in preserving it. However, in many of the rural areas, a strong dialect is still alive.

In the eastern part of the Albasserwards, the dialect is like that of Utrecht, but in the west it is quite Hollandic, although it has some Utrecht influences. The dialect differs even from village to village. It is spoken in cities such as Sliedrecht and Papendrecht. The Papendrecht dialect is almost gone due to heavy immigration.

Slierechs is the very divergent West Albasserwards dialect spoken in the city of Sliedrecht. People here have taken more interest in their dialect than elsewhere in the region, and there are regular CD’s and books issued on it.

Utrechts-Alblasserwaards is a dialect group of Hollandic dialects spoken in Utrecht Province, far southeast South Hollands and a small part of Gelderland. To the south there are dialects heading into Brabantian and to the east, there are more dialects heading into South Gulderish. The dialect has low prestige, and there is little interest in it, even among speakers. Nevertheless, it is still learned by children, and there are 330,000 speakers of this dialect.

Utrechts is spoken by the lower classes of the city of Utrecht, capital of Utrecht Province. Nowadays it is spoken more in the rural areas around the city than in the city itself, but even in the city, it is still spoken in certain districts. There is a lot of immigration into the city and emigration out of it, so the dialect is dying.

Vijfheerenlands is an Utrechts-Alblasserwaards dialect spoken in the Vijfheerenland region in the southeast of South Holland. This area includes the cities of Vianen, Meerkerk, Leerdam and Lexmond.

Eemlands is a confusing set of dialects spoken in the eastern part of Utrecht and has strong Veluws influence. Some say that they are Utrechts-Alblasserwaards dialects, and others say that they are West Veluws. The best analysis is that they are transitional between the two varieties, in other words, that they are Low Franconian-Low Saxon transitional dialects. They are spoken in Soest, Amersfoort and Bunschoten. Amersfoort and Bunschoten tend to be considered more West Veluws, and Soest tends to be seen as more Utrechts. With the exception of Bunschoten, these dialects are highly endangered.

Geldersevalleis is a set of dialects spoken in the Gelders Valley, 2/3 of which is in Gelderland and 1/3 of which is in Utrechts. The towns of Ede, Wageningen and Veenendaal are located in this region. These dialects are very hard to characterize, as they have West Veluws, Utrechts and South Guelderish tendencies. They are seriously declining and becoming more Hollandized.

West Veluws is a strange dialect usually collated with Dutch Low Saxon, but which is in fact a Low Franconian dialect. Practically speaking it is best seen as transitional between Low Franconian and Low Saxon. For the most part it is intelligible with AN, but as one moves to the north and east of the West Veluws area, West Veluws gets harder for AN speakers to understand. This dialect has heavy Dutch influence. In most places, this is a dying dialect, and it is not spoken much by young people anymore.

Even the forms of West Veluws still spoken in the home are coming under increasing AN influence. It is spoken in Amersfoort, Spackenburg, Bunschoten, Nijkerk, Barneveld, Putten, Voorthuizen, Ermelo, Elspeet, Uddel, Leuvenum, Harderwijk, Hierden, Nunspeet, Lunteren, Otterlo and Huenderlo. In Nijkerk, Amersfoort, Spackenburg and Bunschoten in the west of the West Veluws region, the dialect is nearly dead.

Brabantian is actually a separate language. It is distinct from Netherlands Brabantian Dutch, which is merely a dialect of Dutch (Grondelaers 2009). The real hardcore Brabantian is dying out, but it is highly divergent, and Dutch speakers say it is incomprehensible. Intelligibility is far lower than for Zeelandic. However, Verkavelingsvlaams speakers can understand Brabantian pretty well, since Verkavelingsvlaams is very Brabantian.

Brabantian is dying out in the Netherlands, but it is still spoken in Tilburg and in the rural areas of Nord Brabant. There is quite a bit of confusion about what is the pure Brabantian and what is Brabantian Dutch, but the key is intelligibility. Brabantian Dutch is easily comprehensible to an AN speaker, and the real Brabantian is not at all. Other than South Brabantian, which is a separate language, all of the Brabantian dialects are mutually intelligible.

North Central Brabantian is a dialect of Brabantian that is spoken in the Netherlands and Belgium in a strip that runs along the border around the towns of Ravels, Tilburg, Loon op Zant, Waalwijik, Vlifjmen, Huesderf and Drunen.

Tilburgs is a hard North Central Brabantian dialect that is still widely spoken in the city of Tilburg in the southern part of the Netherlands. It is intelligible with the rest of Brabantian (Anonymous January 2010).

East Brabantian is spoken in the eastern part of North Brabant. It is one of the main Brabantian divisions. The various divisions of East Brabantian include Kempenlands, North Meierjis, Peellands, Geldrops and Heeze en Lendes.

It includes the towns of Eindhoven, Veldhoven, Vught, Boxtel, Oirshchot, Best, Acht, Middelbeers, Eersel, Waalre, Mierlo, Luijksgestel, Bergelijk, Aalst, Heeze, Leende, Son, Helmond, Berjeijk, Schijndel, Lieshout, Beek, Gemert, Aarle-Rixtel, Aasten, Someren, Liessel, Duerne, Bakel, Mill, Veghel, Volkel, Uden, Nistelrode, Heesch, Zeeland, Boekel, Sint Michielsgestel in the Netherlands and Arendonk and Lommel in Belgium. East Brabantian is intelligible with the rest of Brabantian (Anonymous January 2010).

unintelligible outside of the nearby area. Hence, it may well be a separate language.

Northwest Brabantian is a Brabantian dialect spoken in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is spoken in Breda and the surrounding region to south into Belgium.

Cities in which it is spoken include Breda, Baarle-Hertog, Oosterhout, Steenbergben, Made, Raamsdonksveer, Roosendaal, Putte, Geertruidenberg Hoogstraten, Brecht, Moerdjik, Oudenbosch, Bergen Op Zoom, Huijbergen, Rijsbergen and Woesndrecht in the Netherlands and Woostwezel, Meer, Ekeren, Merksom, Kapellen, Lillo, Stabroek, Meerle and Rijkevorsel in Belgium.

This dialect was created from the Eighty Years War. After the war, this Brabantian-speaking region was essentially depopulated, and afterward, a large movement of immigration from the Antwerp region occurred, spreading the tendencies of the Antwerps dialect. Northwest Brabantian consists of three major dialects, Antwerps, Baronies and Markiezaats. Antwerps is spoken in Antwerp and north to the Netherlands border. Baronies is spoken in the area around Breda and Markiezaats is spoken in the west over by Zeeland.

Bredaas is a Northwest Brabantian dialect spoken in the city of Breda that is dying out. It is mostly spoken in certain areas and with the older generation. It tends to re-emerge around Carnival time though.

Markiezaats is spoken in the west of North Brabant around the cities of Bergen op Zoom and Steenbergen. It extends over to the Drimmelen region to the northeast and generally includes everything west of Breda.

Antwerps is a hard Brabantian dialect spoken in Antwerp, Belgium. It is intelligible with all the rest of Brabantian (Anonymous January 2010). This dialect is widely disliked in Belgium because it is neither Flemish nor a Dutch dialect, and hence is poorly understood.

It is often heard in the Belgian media, but it is rarely subtitled, and this is the cause of the frustration with non-Antwerps speakers. East Flemish speakers say that they cannot understand it. This language is spoken in Antwerp. In a study, 5

This dialect is one of the most influential in terms of inputs towards the creation of Verkavelingsvlaams. Verkavelingsvlaams at the moment is heavily based on the Antwerps dialect. There is some uncertainty regarding the intelligibility of Antwerps with surrounding lects.

Students who recently went to school in Antwerps say that they could not understand students who came from villages in the Antwerps area. It is not known what lects the villagers were speaking. But since people living in Antwerps say they cannot understand the villagers around them, we have to split it off into a separate language.

Wase is the name for a group of Brabantian dialects spoken in the Waseland in the far northeast of East Flanders. The capital of this region is the city of St. Niklaas. The area was originally wide fields bounded by willow trees. It flooded and was drained a few times. Many turnips are grown here.

Maaslands is a dialect of Brabantian that is spoken in a narrow strip in North Brabant south of the Maas River. It is spoken in the towns of Empel, Maren, Lith, Herpen, Oijen, Megen, Ravenstein, Oss and Grave, all of them along the Maas River.

Bosch is a Maaslands dialect spoken in Hertogenbosch, a large city a bit south of the Maas River in North Brabant. The dialect is still pretty well alive, but its use varies throughout the city, with some areas speaking a lot of Bosch and other areas in which it is rarely heard. Due to immigration and the fact that it has become a commuter town, the dialect has been declining for some time now.

Nederbetuws is a confusing dialect, usually included in South Guelderish, spoken in the Lower Betuws in Gelderland. It actually has heavy Brabantian features. The dialects of the river cities of Tiel and Culemborg are quite different. It is spoken in the towns of Tiel, Culemborg, Buren, Geldermalsen, Wadenoijen, Ophemert, Waardenburg, Herwijnen and Gorinchem. This is mostly a rural area, with a lot of livestock, fruit orchards, vegetables and greenhouses.

South Brabantian is a very divergent lect within Brabantian that is very hard for other Brabantian speakers, even those from nearby Antwerp Province, to understand (Anonymous January 2010). Therefore, it may well be a separate language. It is spoken in Brabant Province in Belgium and around the capital of Brussels. This area has retained the most extreme and archaic Brabantian features. It is under heavy pressure from Verkavelingsvlaams, especially in the cities and less so in the countryside.

The least intelligible variety seems to be spoken from Brussels west to the East Flanders border, especially in the rural areas and near the southern and western borders.

Brussels in the name for a group of South Brabantian lects that were traditionally spoken in Brussels, and still are by a small number of old people. In the past 200 years though, the language of the capital shifted to French. The remaining Brabantian speakers shifted to some form of Dutch, and many today speak some Dutch standard, usually VRT. At any rate, the original Brussels South Brabantian lects are now almost extinct, spoken only by the older generation, most of whom are also bilingual in French.

Traditionally, Brussels lects were very diverse and were not intelligible with Antwerps Brabantian or Leuvens South Brabantian from about 1650 on. Increasing French influence after the Eighty Years War which ended in 1648 resulted in a closing off of Brussels to most outside influence and increasing French influence on the Brussels lects. It was still the most widely used language in Brussels until the French occupation around 1800.

It then began to decline as more residents started speaking French. In part this was an urban elitist effect, as the local rural areas all spoke Brabantian dialects, and the city became increasingly French speaking, especially the upper class. To sum up, to speak French meant you sounded like an aristocrat and to speak Brabantian meant you were talking like a farmer.

During the 1800’s there was a big debate in Brussels about which form of Dutch to make the official language – some common Flemish form or something more like Netherlands Dutch? People could not make up their minds, and this gave people one more reason to just speak French instead.

Brussels is almost extinct, and only some older Brusseliers speak it. Apparently no one else, including almost everyone in Brussels, can understand them. As Brussels is barely understood even in the city, clearly it must not be understood outside the city either. Hence, Brussels may be a separate language. But intelligibility data with the rest of South Brabantian would be nice to have.

Marols is a divergent Brussels dialect traditionally spoken in the colorful Marollen district, traditionally a poorer, rundown working class area, that was recently full of drug dealers and bums, but is now undergoing gentrification. Marols is a strange mixture of Spanish, Yiddish, Walloon and Brabantian. The Yiddish and Spanish is from many Spanish Republicans and Polish Jews moving to this district just before WW2. Marols is rarely heard these days, and intelligibility with the rest of Brussels is not known.

Liekert is a South Brabantian dialect spoken in Liedekerke, Belgium in Brabant Province on the border with East Flanders. It is unintelligible with the rest of even Flemish Brabantian, including Antwerps.

Leuvens or Leives is a South Brabantian dialect spoken in the city of Leuven in Belgian Brabant. Many immigrants moved to the city after WW2, and use of the dialect reduced dramatically. Intelligibility between Leuvens and the rest of South Brabantian is not known.

Ninove is apparently a South Brabantian dialect spoken in the city of Ninove in the east of East Flanders. It is probably close to Liekert, and hence is very hard for even Flemish to understand.

Elingen is a South Brabantian dialect spoken in the town of Elingen on the border with Hainaut Province. It is not intelligible at all with Brabantian proper (Anonymous January 2010).

Aalsters is a South Brabantian dialect that is very hard for even the Flemish to understand. It is spoken in the city of Aalst in East Flanders, Belgium, on the border of Brabant Province. It is also spoken in Opwijks, Asses and Tenants over the border in Brabant Province.

Tiens is a South Brabantian dialect spoken in Tienen in Eastern Brabant, Belgium. It has Limburgish tendencies. It is dying out and tends to be spoken more by the working classes, but is still pretty widely spoken. Intelligibility with the rest of South Brabantian is not known.

Afrikaans is a separate language, recognized by Ethnologue. It is spoken in South Africa by 13.2 million people, including 6.45 million native speakers and 6.75 million second language speakers. 12-16 million people have basic knowledge of the language.

A study noted that Dutch speakers have 5

Zeelandic or Zeêuws is a separate language, recognized by Ethnologue as a different Low Franconian language from Dutch. Zeelandic is not easily understood by AN speakers. It is spoken in Zeeland Province and in South Holland Province on the island of Goeree-Overflakee. This area is south of Rotterdam. It is best thought of as transitional between Dutch and West Flemish.

There are a variety of dialects, Walcheren, Zuid-Beveland and Goeree-Overflakee among others. Toward the north, Zeelandic looks more Hollandic or Dutch, and towards the south, it looks more Flemish. The dialects of Zeelandic Flanders are really outside of the definition of Zeelandic and are best described as East and West Flemish instead.

Although it is clearly a separate language from Dutch, Dutch nationalism mandates that it be seen as a dialect and not a separate language, hence the Dutch government refuses to recognize it as a separate language. The language is still in pretty good shape, though it is declining.

It still has 220,000 speakers. In some rural villages, up to 9

Along with French Flemish and West Flemish, Zeelandic is part of Southwest Low Franconian. These languages are said to be the remains of the oldest of Old Franconian.

Burgerzeeuws is a Dutch dialect spoken in Zeeland. Though it ought to be part of the Zeelandic language, it is not. It is originally Zeelandic, spoken in the cities of Zeeland, which was then replaced with Hollandic by status conscious upwardly mobile people. Like Stadsfries, this language developed in the 1600’s. It is especially spoken in Middelburg and Vissingen.

In the 1990’s, only 1/3 of urban Zeelanders spoke Zeelandic, compared to 2/3 in the province as a whole. This dialect is still alive though, even among the youth, especially in conservative Christian circles. In some areas this dialect is scorned, while in others it is valued. Burgerzeeuws has unknown intelligibility with AN, but it is probably easier to understand than Zeelandic proper.

Oostvoorns is a Zeelandic dialect spoken in the far north of the region that is actually spoken outside of Zeeland proper in the area called Oostverne just to the north. Some say that this dialect is actually Hollandic and not Zeelandic. It’s probably best seen as a transitional Zeelandic-Hollandic dialect. Intelligibility with AN is not known, but it’s probably better understood to AN speakers than the rest of Zeelandic.

Goerees is a Zeelandic dialect spoken in the Goeree region of Zeeland. The dialect of the fishing village of Ouddorp is quite different, with many unique words. It is quite a bit different from the rest of Zeelandic. This dialect is still widely spoken.

Flakkees is a Zeelandic dialect spoken in the region of Overflakee, east of Goeree. It is spoken in Ooltgensplaat, Middelharnis and Sommelsdijk. Flakkees is divided into three subdialects – West Flakkees, East Flakkees and Brabants Flakkees. Flakkees is still very widely spoken.

Schouwen-Duivelands is a Zeelandic dialect spoken in the Zeelandic region of Schouwen-Duivelands. In some places such as Bruinisse the dialect is in great shape, with 9

Thools is a Zeelandic dialect spoken on the former island of Tholen is Zeeland. It is undergoing some decline due to widespread immigration but is still widely spoken. There is a sharp barrier between Thools and the North Brabant area just to the east. The city of Oud Vesssemer speaks a mixed North Brabantian-Zeelandic dialect.

Walchers is a Zeelandic dialect spoken on the former island of Walcheren in Zeeland. It is spoken in the towns of Domburg, Westkapelle, Koudekerke, Arnemuiden and Oost Souburg. The dialect of the fishing village of Westkapelle is very different, with many unique words. In Westkapelle and Arnemuiden, the dialect is still doing very well. In other places it is under heavy pressure from tourism and immigration.

South Bevelands is a Zeelandic lect spoken in the Zuid Bevelands area of Zeeland. This area is still very rural, so the lect is in great shape. South Bevelands was scarcely touched by Hollandization during the Golden Age of Holland, hence its archaic character.

South Bevelands is extremely diverse, varying wildly from one village and town to the next to the point that communication is so seriously impaired that residents from different towns typically use AN to communicate rather than their town lects. On the face of it, it’s tempting to split off every town as a separate language, but that seems wild and threatens chaos, and until we get more data, it’s thankfully premature.

However, since South Bevelands is not even intelligible within itself, it can’t possibly be intelligible with the rest of Zeelandic, hence it may well be a separate language.

Land of Cadzands is a Zeelandic dialect spoken in the far south of the Netherlands in Zeelandic Flanders. It is properly seen as a Zeelandic dialect transitioning to West Flemish.

Dutch Low Saxon is a group of lects related to Dutch and German that are very hard to classify, especially in terms of their relationship with Low German in Germany and with Low Franconian (Macro-Dutch) in the Netherlands.

I originally put Dutch Low Saxon in with Low German and added it to my German reclassification. However, after thinking this over for a year now, I now believe that Dutch Low Saxon belongs much more in Macro-Dutch than in Macro-German. Nerbonne 1996 makes a convincing case that Dutch Low Saxon is more properly seen as Macro-Dutch than as Macro-German in a scientific paper analyzing Levenshtein distances between Dutch lects.

There is an argument floating around that all of Dutch Low Saxon is intelligible with all of German Low Saxon. This is certainly not true. Looking at Veluws to Schleswigsch, those two languages are not intelligible with each other at all. In fact, even Groningen and Veluws are not intelligible within the Netherlands alone.

Arguing against the notion of Dutch Low Saxon as being a Dutch dialect, many Dutch say that Dutch Low Saxon is not intelligible with Dutch. There is marginal intelligibility of around 9

Dutch Low Saxon includes four groups: Friso-Saxon, Westphalian, Gelders-Oaveriessels and Plautdietsch.

Friso-Saxon is a group of Low Saxon lects spoken in Groningen that have all been heavily influenced by the East Frisian language. These lects are Gronings-East Frisian Low Saxon, Stellingwerfs, Westerkwartiers, Kollumerpompsters, Kollumerlands, Middaglands, Middle Westerkwartiers, South Westerkwartiers, Hogelandsters, Stadsgronings, Westerwolds, Veenkoloniaals and Oldambtsters.

It is often stated that Friso-Saxon is intelligible with general Low Saxon across the board across the border in Germany. This is not true; it is only intelligible with East Frisian Low Saxon, which is not part of the greater German Low Saxon language. For instance, Gronings, Westerwolds and Veenkoloniaals have only 5

What is difficult is dividing up Dutch Low Saxon into different languages. Ethnologue has gone too far, with proper Dutch Low Saxon divided into eight separate languages – Gronings, Veluws, Sallands, Drents, Stellingwerfs, Twents, Achterhoeks and Plautdietsch. We have reduced this complexity quite a bit here, by reducing Dutch Low Saxon to Friso-Saxon, Stellingwerfs, Urkers and Plautdietsch – four languages, and a reduction of Ethnologue’s classification by 5 languages.

Gronings-East Frisian Low Saxon is a Friso-Saxon language, consisting of two parts, Gronings in the Netherlands and East Frisian Low Saxon across the border in Germany.

East Frisian Low Saxon is a Friso-Saxon dialect spoken in the East Frisian peninsula of northwestern Lower Saxony, Germany. It is intelligible with Gronings in the Netherlands. However, it has only 5

This dialect has an East Frisian substratum. There is dialectal diversity between the western and eastern branches. There are also speakers of this dialect in Iowa, about 500 of them, mostly over age 50. The classic variety of East Frisian Low Saxon probably looks something like this. Dialects include Hinte, Ems (Emsfriesisches), Weser (Weserfriesisches), Jeverländer, Harlingerländer, Ommelands and Mooringer.

Hinte East Frisian Low Saxon (Hintener) is a divergent dialect of East Frisian Low Saxon, but intelligibility data with the rest of East Frisian Low Saxon is not known. It is spoken in the town of Hinte in Germany on the Dutch-German border. Hinte is spoken in Eastern Friesland (Ostfriesland) in Lower Saxony in Germany and Groningen is on the Dutch side. It is somewhat similar to Twents.

Westerkwartiers is a group of Friso-Saxon dialects spoken in the far southwest of Groningen Province. This is the group of Friso-Saxon dialects that most resembles West Frisian. A good characterization of this group would be to say it is transitional from Gronings to West Frisian. The cities of Leek, Zuidhorn and Marum speak this dialect. The group includes Kollumerpompsters, Kollumerlands, Middle Westerkwartiers, South Westerkwartiers and Middaglands.

Kollumerpompsters is a Friso-Saxon Westerkwartiers dialect spoken in the city of Kollumerpomp and the surrounding area in the far east of Friesland. The municipality of Kollum speaks this dialect.

The Gronings group of dialects that are spoken in all of Groningen Province, some of Drenthe Province, and a bit of Friesland Province in far northeastern Netherlands. They have 320,000 speakers. They have a heavy Old Frisian (East Frisian) substrate.

Along with Limburgish, it is the group spoken in the Netherlands farthest from Dutch. Yet Gronings is intelligible with East Frisian Low Saxon across the border in Germany. Gronings is very close to Drents, but it is far from Achterhoeks, Twents and Stellingwerfs, and is Hogelandsters is a Friso-Saxon dialect spoken in the far north of Groningen in a region called Hogeland. This is said to be the “purest” Gronings of all, and it is the hardest for AN speakers to understand. The cities of Leens, Ulrum, Baflo, Uithuizen, Bedum, Winsum, Loppersum and Uithuizermeeden are located in this region.

Stadsgronings is the Friso-Saxon dialect spoken in the city of Groningen itself. It is close to North Drents. The dialect is dying out in the city itself due to immigration of large numbers of students from outside the region who do not speak Gronings.

However, many people still speak Gronings in the city and some are more or less Gronings monolinguals who do not speak ABN well. These tend to be people age 40+ (Felder 2015).

Noordenvelds or North Drents is hard to analyze, but it is best analyzed as Friso-Saxon and not Drents proper. This dialect is close to Stadsgronings. It is spoken in the north of Drenthe Province in the towns of Roden, Norg, Eelde and Vries by 38,000 people. This is nearly the same speech as Stadsgronings (Felder 2015).

Oldambtsters-Reiderlands is a Friso-Saxon dialect spoken in a part of Groningen called Oldambt. It is related to Veenkoloniaals and Hogelandsters and has heavy Westphalian influence. Oldambtsters has a close relationship with the Rheiderlander dialect of East Frisian Low Saxon across the border in Germany; in fact, it is basically the same dialect. East Frisian was spoken here until 1400.

This dialect is steadily declining, but holds out best in the rural areas. German is still widely spoken in this part of the Netherlands, especially in the city of Winschoten. It is spoken in Winschoten, Scheemda, Noordbroek, Heiligerlee, Beerta and Nieuwe Schans.

Veenkoloniaals is a Friso-Saxon dialect spoken in eastern Groningen on the border between Groningen and Drenthe Provinces and over the border into Drenthe. This dialect came into being due to peat mining in the area. In recent years it has been expanding a lot, probably because it is closer to AN than neighboring lects.

Veenkoloniaals is close to Drents but even closer to Stellingwerfs. Veenkoloniaals lacks full intelligibility with Dutch. Veenkoloniaals is quite close to Stadsgronings and almost sounds like the same lect. There are a few differences between the two. This is a harder Gronings that is even harder for ABN speakers to understand than Stadsgronings (Felder 2015).

Westerwolds is another Friso-Saxon dialect. that, like Veenkoloniaals, is spoken in eastern Groningen. Westerwolds is not fully intelligible with Dutch and has heavy influence from East Frisian Low Saxon spoken in Germany. Although it is Friso-Saxon, it is closer to Westphalian than to Frisian. It has a particularly close relationship to Ems Low Saxon spoken in Germany.

Lately it has been losing ground to Veenkoloniaals. It is spoken in a small corner of far southeast Groningen on the German border in the towns of Stadskanaal, Musselkanaal, Ter Appelkanaal, Ter Appel and Vledderveen. ABN speakers say that this is an extremely hard form of Gronings that is very hard to understand, even harder to understand than Veenkoloniaals (Felder 2015).

Stellingwerfs is a Friso-Saxon language spoken in the municipalities of Weststellingwerfs and Oststellingwerfs in southeastern Friesland Province on the border with Drenthe and Overijssel Provinces and over the border into Drenthe and Overijssel.

It is spoken in towns such as Appelscha, Noordwolde, Tjalleberd, Luinjeberd, Donkerbroek, St. Johannesga, Rotsterhaule, Rotstergaast, Delfstrahuizen, Uffelte, Diever, Vledder, Echten, Steenwijk, Giethoorn, Tuk, Willemsoord, Oldemarkt, Kuinre, Smilde, Wolvega, Oldeberkoop, Oldeholtpa, Nijeholtpa, Dwingeloo and Oosterzee.

Frisian speakers moved into the formerly Drents-speaking area when peat-digging began. This began the process of Frisianization. Stellingwerfs is not usually put into Friso-Saxon, but Heeringa 2004 makes a good case for putting it into Friso-Saxon (Fig. 4, p. 97).

One way to look at Stellingwerfs is to see it as a Drents variety intermixed strongly with a Frisian layer (Heeringa 2004). The process of Frisianization began as early as the 1200’s. Stellingwerfs probably has over 300,000 speakers in two dialects, East Stellingwerfs and West Stellingwerfs. Stellingwerfs is not close to Gronings, Drents, Twents or Achterhoeks, and it is not fully intelligible with Dutch, East Veluws is a Gelders-Overijssels Dutch Low Saxon dialect spoken in the Veluwe, a formerly heavily forested and swampy region along a ridge in northern Gelderland Province. This region has a lot of wildlife and used to be very popular with hunters. There are proposals to turn much of this region into a national park.

Although it is a part of Dutch Low Saxon, Veluws is marginal within this family (Smith 2009), with West Veluws looking a lot like Low Franconian (“Dutch”) proper, and East Veluws looking more like a typical Dutch Low Saxon. West Veluws and East Veluws can understand each other, and East Veluws and Twents are mutually intelligible. East Veluws is more intelligible with Dutch than any other type of Low Saxon, probably due to its close connection to West Veluws, a Low Franconian lect; however, East Veluws tends to have marginal intelligibility with AN.

Veluws is one of the lects where Low Saxon and Low Franconian are very close, similar to Gronings and East Frisian Low Saxon, except that Veluws in closer to Low Franconian, and Gronings is closer to Low Saxon. Nevertheless, Veluws is Sallands is a Gelders-Overijssels Dutch Low Saxon dialect spoken in the Salland region in the western part of Overijssel Province. Sallands has fewer than 300,000 speakers. Sallands lacks full intelligibility with Dutch, but is intelligible with Twents. Based on linguistic distance (Fig. 3) it may not be intelligible with Groningen. There is a transitional Sallands-Twents dialect spoken on the border with the northwest of the Twents-speaking area (ter Denge 2009). There is a lot of variability in Sallands.

Sallands is spoken in Zwolle, Zutphen, Nijverdal, Vroomshoop, Kloosterhaar, Marienberg, Hardenberg, Gramsbelgen, Lutten, Heemse, Witharen, Ommen, Oudleusen, Den Ham, Vilsteren, Dalfsen, Kampen, Heino, Lemereveld, Ittersum, Wijhe, Windesheim, Heeten, Olst, Espelo, Holten, Wesepe, Diepenveen, Lettele, Deventer, Bathmen, Genemuiden, Zwartsluis and Blokzijl.

Zwols is a Sallands dialect spoken in Zwolle, the capital of Overijssel Province. It has some similarities to Urkers nearby. 6

Dêmpters is the name of the Sallands dialect spoken in Deventer.

Zutphens is a transitional Achterhoeks-Sallands dialect that is spoken in Zutphen, a city in Gelderland. It is interesting because it has many Hollands features. Zutphens is still very heavily spoken by the population of the city.

not intelligible with Dutch.

It is spoken in Assen, Rolde, Geiten, Annen, Anlo, Eext, Klooverstervee, Gasselte, Borger, Grollo, Buinem, Elp, Amen, Beilen, Odoorn, Schoonloo, Hijken, Emmen, Valthermond, Zoordsleen, Sleen, Hoogeveen, Noordbarge, Dalen, Coevorden, Schoonebeek, Eursinge, Zuidwolde, Nieuw Amsterdam, Klazienaveen, Nieuw Schoonebeek, Zwartemeer, De Krim, Linde, Staphorst, Ruinen, Balkbrug, Meppel, Dedemsvaart, Rouveen, Den Hulst and Havelte.

Urkers is a very divergent Gelders-Overijssels Dutch Low Saxon lect spoken in the small city of Urks, formerly an island in the Zeelandic Sea. It is a very conservative Protestant town with no less than 17 churches, where 9

Urkers is utterly incomprehensible to AN speakers, and on structural and intelligibility grounds, there is justification for making it a separate language. Further, a linguistic analysis based on Levenshtein distance suggests that Urkers is best analyzed as a separate language in its own right, apart from all other Dutch lects (Heeringa 2004).

Westphalian Dutch Low Saxon is a branch of Dutch Low Saxon. It contains two dialects, Twents and Achterhoeks, is heavily Germanized and collates with the Westphalian Low German spoken across the border in Germany. Twents is one of the most divergent of all of the Dutch Low Saxon lects from AN, especially the dialects spoken in Vriezenzeen, Rijssen and Wierden.

Twents is a Westphalian Dutch Low Saxon dialect with 328,000 speakers, or 6

Every town has its own dialect, but all dialects are mutually intelligible. Twents is not close to Stellingwerfs or Gronings, but it is intelligible with Drents, Sallands, Achterhoeks (ter Denge 2009) and East Veluws. Based on linguistic distance (Fig. 3) it may not be intelligible with Groningen.

In the northwest of the Twents region, there is a transitional Sallands-Twents dialect that has a largely Twents vocabulary with a Sallands inflection. In the towns of Rijssen and Enter, there is a variety of Twents spoken that uses diphthongs where other varieties have monophthongs. This may be a remnant of an earlier Westphalian variety that may have been generalized throughout the Twents region. On the border with the Achterhoeks region, there is no clear dialect border, as Twents and Achterhoeks slide into each other (ter Denge 2009).

Many Dutch speakers find Twents unintelligible.

Twents is spoken in the towns of Vriezenveen, Almelo, Rijssen, Hengelo, Borne, Enschede, Oldenzaal, Tubbergen, Ootmarsum, Weerselo, Reutum, Denekamp, Deurningen, Losser, Lonneker, Glanerbrug, Usselo, Boekelo, Haaksenbergen, Diepenheim, Goor, Delden, Markelo and Wierden.

Achterhoeks is a Westphalian Dutch Low Saxon dialect. Achterhoeks is far from Drents, Gronings and Stellingwerfs but is intelligible with Twents (ter Denge 2009). Based on linguistic distance (Fig. 3) it may not be intelligible with Groningen. Achterhoeks is not intelligible with Dutch. Achterhoeks is in very good shape, and is widely used as an everyday language.

Achterhoeks is spoken Northern Gelderland east of East Veluws in towns such as Doetinchem, Terborg, Silvolde, Ulft, Dinxperlo, Alten, Winterswijk, Meddo, Groenle, Lichtenvoorde, Eibergen, Neede, Borculo, Ruunlo, Zelhem, Hengelo, Lochem, Laren, Almen and Vorden. Interestingly, Achterhoeks speakers in Dinxperlo can communicate with speakers of Westphalian German Low Saxon in Suderwick, Germany, across the border.

Plautdietsch is a Dutch Low Saxon language that originated in the Netherlands, but then spread to other parts of the world. It forms a subgroup of its own and is quite divergent from the rest of Dutch Low Saxon. It is not intelligible with many other Low German languages, Standard German, or Pennsylvania German. Plautdietsch has 5

This language was originally a Friesland Dutch Low Saxon lect, but they moved to Prussia after they were persecuted for their religion, and later they moved to the US. This is the language of the Mennonites worldwide.

Flemish or Vlaams is a separate language, recognized as such by Ethnologue. Flemish has anywhere from 3

Hinrichs undated makes a strong case for the inclusion of Flemish as a recognized regional language in section III of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages based on linguistic distance to AN. The distance between Flemish and AN is as great as between Low Saxon and Dutch, and Low Saxon is recognized.

VRT-Nederlands, BRT-Nederlands, VT-Nederlands or BT-Nederlands are abbreviations for the form of AN spoken in Belgium. It may be thought as “Dutch with a Fleming accent.” It is easily intelligible with AN, and is increasingly heard on Belgian TV. Further, many Flemings can also speak this language, which is pretty much what they are taught in school under the rubric of “Dutch” classes. There is tremendous confusion between this dialect and “Flemish.”

This dialect is simply a dialect of Dutch or AN. The varieties subsumed under Flemish are completely different languages altogether. This dialect is making increasing inroads in Belgian life and some Flemish speakers are becoming alarmed about this.

Standard Flemish, Verkavelingsvlaams, Vlaamse Tussentaal, VT or Soap Vlaams (henceforth VT) is a koine developed recently in Belgium that is understood by all Flemish speakers and is used often on TV. It is a mixture both of an artificially created Standard Flemish and the local dialects, and AN speakers find it quite incomprehensible. It is nearly the same as Belgian Brabantian. It probably has around 3.4 million speakers in Belgium. VT is fully intelligible with the Brabantian language.

West Flemish or West Vlaams is a highly divergent Low Franconian language that, along with French Flemish and Zeelandic, is part of Southwest Low Franconian and is the closest to the original Old Franconian. This group of languages is interesting because they have retained features of Ingvaeonic or North Sea Germanic features. Ingvaeonic is the postulated language that gave birth to Old English, Old Saxon and Old Frisian, possibly 2,000 YBP. It was spoken what is now the Netherlands, northwest Germany and Denmark. There are also influences from langues d’oil, not so much French proper as Picard, which is spoken adjacent to the West Flemish region.

West Flemish is spoken in Zeelandic Flanders in the Netherlands, West Flanders Province in Belgium and French Flanders in Nord Province in France (see map Fig. 1). East Flemish speakers have a hard time understanding West Flemish, especially the variety spoken in France. For example, West Flemish speakers regularly get subtitles on Belgian TV. Studies have shown that speakers of Antwerp East Flemish cannot understand the West Flemish of Oostende, Diksmuide, or Kortrijk, cities in West Flanders Province (De Houwer 2008).

West Flemish has 1 million regular speakers in West Flanders in Belgium and 70,000 in Zeelandic Flanders for a total of 1.07 million speakers. It also has a few speakers in Flemish Zeeland in the Netherlands.

Brugs is a West Flemish dialect spoken in and around the city of Bruges. It is quite divergent from other West Flemish dialects and even other Flemish find it hard to understand. However, precise intelligibility with West Flemish per se and not Flemish per se (whatever that means) is needed before we can determine whether or not it is a separate language. Brugs is declining in recent days and is being replaced with a more widely spoken Flemish, possibly VT.

Kortrijks is a West Flemish dialect spoken in the city of Kortrijk in the southeast of West Flanders. It is also spoken in the towns of Kuurne, Wevelgem, Ledegem, Moorslede, Muelebeke, Tiens and Izegem. Past Tiens, it starts turning into the Brugs dialect. Past Moorslede, it starts turning into the Ypres dialect.

Ypres is a South Flanders dialect spoken in and around the city of Ypres in the south of West Flanders. It is different from Kortrijks.

Waregems is a dialect spoken in the West Flanders city of Waregem. It is different from Kortrijks and is unique in some ways. It is best seen as a West Flanders dialect heading out towards the East Flanders language. There is an entire area on the border between West Flanders and East Flanders where the dialects may be hard to characters as belonging to either the West Flanders or East Flanders languages. There is a suggestion that only those from the immediate area can understand Waregems well, but until we get better data, it is premature to split it.

Vlaemsch or French West Flemish is a highly divergent West Flemish lect spoken in France that has been diverging from the rest of West Flemish for over 300 years since Louis XIV annexed it to France around 1680. Vlaemsch is full of French loan words, and other West Flemish speakers (such as Oostende West Flemish speakers) have a hard time understanding it, so it is probably a separate language.

Though it is recognized by the French government as a minority language (as “Dutch”), it gets no support from them and has been declining for centuries. It has 60,000 speakers, 20,000 of whom use it every day. The vast majority of Vlaemsch speakers are over age 60. Vlaemsch will probably go extinct in a matter of decades.

East Flemish or East Vlaams is a separate language spoken mostly in East Flanders in Belgium but also in Zeelandic Flanders in the Netherlands. It is not intelligible with AN. For example, the East Flemish speakers in Zeelandic Flanders have a hard time understanding the Brabantian Dutch speakers across the Schelde River. Also, East Flemish speakers have a hard time understanding West Flemish.

West Flemish speakers moving to Ghent in large numbers have created so many problems that the city council took action against them for “speaking a language that no one could understand,” that is, West Flemish.

Not only is East Flemish a separate language, but there is tremendous dialect diversity inside of East Flanders. In fact, it appears that East Flanders is more than one language. East Flemish probably has about Gents is a highly divergent East Flemish lect spoken in Ghent, Belgium that appears to be a separate language. It is considered very hard to understand even by other East Flemish speakers, so it may be a separate language. To South Brabantian speakers, it may as well be Greek.

In fact, there are two different dialects of Gents, one on the west side of the city and another on the east side. In addition, the dialects of the villages around Ghent are also said to be different from Gents itself. Intelligibility data for the various dialects in and around Ghent is not known. This language has many features of a “language island,” in that it differs markedly from surrounding East Flemish lects. Gents has a strong French influence and many French loans.

Dendermonds is another highly divergent East Flemish lect spoken in the city of Dendermode. Studies indicate that other East Flemish speakers have a hard time understanding it (De Houwer 2008), so it may well be a separate language. Dendermode is about 1/2 way between Antwerp and Ghent. This language has heavy Brabantian influence, and that is why it is so different from the rest of East Flemish.

Lokers is an East Flemish dialect spoken in the city of Lokeren in the northeast of East Flanders on the border with Brabantian. Here East Flemish is transitioning to a group of Brabantian dialects called Wase, spoken in the Waseland. This dialect may be close to Dendermonds.

Limburgish is an East Low Franconian language that is spoken in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is a separate language and is not intelligible with other forms of Low Franconian nor with any Low German. As a part of Meuse-Rhenish, it is transitional between Low Franconian (Dutch) and Low German (German).

Limburgish and Dutch had very different geneses – Limburgish came from Old East Low Franconian, and Dutch came from Old West Low Franconian. It has 1.6 million speakers. Each village and city has its own dialect, but they are all mutually intelligible. There are as many as 580 different Limburgish dialects.

Although Limburgish is said to be intelligible with Ripuarian, the truth is that it is not inherently intelligible with it. There are however some Limburgish and Ripuarian dialects on the borders of the two that are transitional between Ripuarian and Limburgish. See the South Guelderish and the Low Dietsch entries here for more on those transitional languages.

Limburgish is one of the Meuse-Rhenish languages. It is often claimed that Limburgish is intelligible with German, but this is not so. The intelligibility situation with regard to Limburgish and AN is confusing.  Some say that Limburgish has marginal intelligibility with AN (Zweers 2009), but other Dutch speakers say that they can barely understand a word of Limburgish. A study concluded that Dutch speakers have about 8

The real pure Limburgish is not intelligible with Standard Dutch at all, but what is most often spoken nowadays is a sort of a Dutch-Limburgish mixed language that is intelligible to most AN speakers. However, there are still some speakers of the real pure Limburgish around.

This Wikipedia article on Limburgish is wrong. It groups all of Bergish, South Guelderish, Southeast Limburgish and Dutch Limburgish into one “variety” or dialect, and then refuses to call that variety a language.

However, “Limburgish” is composed of at least four languages. Bergish is a separate language, not intelligible with Southeast Limburgish (6

Geleens is an East Limburgish dialect that is spoken in the city of Geleen in Limburg Province in the Netherlands. It differs quite a bit from the dialect of Sittard, even though the two cities have recently merged.

Sittards or Zittesj is an East Limburgish dialect that is spoken in Sittard in Limburg Province, the Netherlands. It’s quite different from Geleens. It is closest to dialects right across the German border, but otherwise it is a transitional Middle Limburgish-South Limburgish dialect, similar to Roermond.

Heerlen Dutch is a Limburgish-Dutch creole or dialect of Dutch spoken in the city of Heerlen in Limburg Province, the Netherlands. In the 1800’s, there were many coal miners in this area and everyone spoken Heerlen Limburgish. As the mines expanded, people came to work from all over the Netherlands and even the Kerkrade region of Germany.

None of them spoke Heerlen, and many didn’t even speak Limburgish. Later a sort of creole based on AN and Heerlen arose. What we have now is a Dutch dialect with a Heerlen base and a strong Limburgish flavor, not really a Limburgish dialect per se. Heerlen Dutch is apparently intelligible with AN.

Hasselts or Hessels is a Limburgish dialect spoken in Hasselt in Belgian Limburg. Dialect leveling has been occurring in the past 50 years as rural residents of the surrounding villages moved to Hasselt. It is best analyzed as a Belgian Limburgish dialect transitional with Brabantian.

Maastrichts is a Limburgish dialect spoken in the city of Maastricht in Dutch Limburgish. It has 60,000 speakers and hence is the largest Limburgish dialect. It is still widely spoken in the city. Maastrichts differs significantly from the dialects of the neighboring villages.

Horsters is the Limburgish dialect spoken in the city of Horst in Dutch Limburg. Some say that everything north of Venlo is outside of Limburgish proper and into South Guelderish. That’s an interesting argument, but we will leave it in Limburgish for now, especially since Limburgish isoglosses extend to just north of Horst. Some see it as transitional between Limburgish and South Guelderish, Kleverlandish and North Limburgish.

Tegels is is a Limburgish dialect spoken in the city of Tegelen in Dutch Limburg. Although it is very close to Venlo, Tegels speaks a typical Limburgish dialect, while Venlo is North Limburgish and is probably a separate language altogether.

They are so different because Tegelen was ruled by the Duchy of Gulik for 750 years, while Venlo was under the Duchy of Gelders for 400 years. The Duchys did not end their rule of both cities until around 1800 or so. Tegelen did not go to the Netherlands until 1817, when it was traded to Netherlands from Germany in exchange for the Dutch city of Henzogenrath, which was traded to Germany.

Weerts or Wieërts is a Limburgish dialect spoken in the city of Weert in Dutch Limburg. It is a Middle Limburgish dialect. Weerts, together with another Limburgish dialect spoken in Hamont in Belgian Limburg and a dialect of Bavarian, has more vowels than any other lect on Earth – 28 of them. The area around Weerts has many forests, sand dunes, bogs and marshes. This part of the Netherlands is also very Catholic. In the far north, it tends to be a lot more Protestant.

Hamont is a Limburgish dialect spoken in Hamont, on the border with the Netherlands in Belgian Limburg.

The map below (Fig. 3) is quite interesting. As we can see below, Limburgish is further removed from Dutch than Veluws, Afrikaans, and Dutch Low Saxon. Much of Dutch Low Saxon is also further from Dutch than Afrikaans.

South Low Franconian is the name for a lect spoken in Germany just east of the Limburgs Province in the Netherlands. Dialects include Jlabbacher Platt of central Mönchengladbach, Föschelner Platt of Fischeln in Krefeld, and Dremmener Platt of Dremmen near Heinsberg. The intelligibility of these German lects with the rest of Meuse-Rhenish is unclear, and it may be a separate language altogether. The closest in intelligibility would be to Bergish, Venloos and Southeast Limburgish in that order.

Southeast Limburgish (SE Limburgish) is a East Low Franconian language made up of a number of dialects that are transitional between Limburgish and Ripuarian. It has a close relationship with Limburgish. Some call SE Limburgish/Low Dietsch/Aachen German by an alternate name – Limburgish-Ripuarian of the Three Countries Area.

Some classifications put this language into Ripaurian, but it is possibly better analyzed as Limburgish or better yet Ripuarian-Limburgish transitional. The classification is important since if it is Ripaurian, this language is “German,” and if it is Limburgish, it is “Dutch.” But if we see it as Ripuarian-Limburgish transitional, this language may most properly be characterized as a Dutch-German transitional lect.

It is spoken in Belgium around Eupen, including Welkenraedt, Lontzen, Raeren, La Calamine, Eynatten, Gemmenich, and Moresnet; in the Netherlands between Ubach and Brunssum in the towns of Kerkrade, Bocholtz and Vaals, where it is known as Waals; and in a large area in North Rhine-Westphalia between the cities of Aachen and Eschweiler in the towns of Stolberg, Wurselen, Eilendorf and Kohlscheid. To the east over by Duren (Dürener Platt), we start moving into Ripuarian proper. It is also spoken in the far upper Eifel region around the Hurtgen Forest (Tulipan 2013).

It is a separate language, unintelligible to those outside the region. Most if not all Southeast Limburgish lects appear to be intelligible with each other (Tulipan 2013).

Bocholtzer is a SE Limburgish dialect spoken in the towns of Bocholtz, Bocholtzerheide and Baneheide in Limburg Province. It is still very widely spoken in the area. Intelligibility is about 9

Aachen German or Aachener Platt is a SE Limburgish dialect spoken in this same general region in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia on the border with Belgium. Aachen German has 6

Intelligibility with Stolberg German is excellent (Tulipan 2013). Aachen German intelligibility with Ripaurian is variable, but averages 4

Stolberg German is a SE Limburgish dialect spoken in Stolberg, Germany, near Aachen. It is intelligible with Aachen German, though it has more Ripuarian influences. and 9

Kirchröadsj is a SE Limburgish dialect spoken in Kerkrade in the Netherlands. It is often put into Ripuarian, but we will put it in SE Limburgish instead. Kirchröadsj is not fully intelligible with Kölsch. But it along with Vaals and related lects is about 9

Low Dietsch is a lect, often thought to be a SE Limburgish dialect, that is made up of a number of subdialects that are transitional between Limburgish and Ripuarian. However, Low Dietsch is better seen as a separate language because intelligibility with Southeast Limburgs is poor (Köhler 2015). When people say that Limburgish and Ripuarian are mutually intelligible, what they mean is that there are languages like Low Dietsch and Southeast Limburgish that are transitional between Limburgish and Ripuarian.

Around Eupen a Low Dietsch dialect called Eupener Platt (Eupen German) is spoken. Eupener Platt has only 2

Low Dietsch has been slowly dying out for a long time, since World War 1, almost a century, and it is not spoken much anymore. However, in recent years it is undergoing a Renaissance, and it is now being spoken more, even by young people, who seem to be spearheading the resurgence (Tulipan 2013). Eupener Platt has high but not full intelligibility with Kolsch (~7

The following is an example of Eupener Platt.

VERTÉLLTJERE

De Ammerekaaner By Siegfried Theissen

Wi de Ammerekaaner no Öëpe koëmte – iich gelöüf, et woër veerenvärrtech off voëvenvärrtech – wonnde ver ä gene Wéërt. Wi ver no hoërte dat-te Ammerekaaner ä gene Hollefter, a ge Schokkelaates, en gruëte Käüche oppgemaakt hoë, léïpe véër Kaïnder dahään, waïl aïnder es fertaut hoë, dadd-et ta Panneköük ömmesöss güëf. Änn taatsächlech, jédderéïne kräch esuvoël Panneköük, wi-e draage koss!

Änn véër Kaïnder krächte ouch noch en Taafel Schokkelaat, gätt watt fer allt lang neet mië geséë hoë. Dé Schokkelaat woër esu schwarrt wi di ammerekaanesche Köch.

Di Schwarrte doschde suwisuë märr Dénnsmättje schpéële! Obb-ene gouwe Daach gäng derr Vadder métt, änn éïne van di Schwarrte, dé gätt Döttsch koss, waïl-e e gannts Joër bi de Döttsche gevange gewässt woër, vrodde ann derr Vadder, off-e neet föël Gaïlt ferdeene wöül. Derr Vadder woër natüürlech mésstrouwesch änn saat: „ Watt möss-ech da davöër doë?“. – „Véër Schwarrte, saat-é Schwarrte, wäärde van de wétte Offtséëre esuë schléët behaïndelt, ver wäärde ouch esuë schléët betallt, dadd-iich nou oug ens gätt ferdéïne wéll!

Iich hann ene ganntse Kammjong voll Tsigerätte geklaut, änn dé wéll ech nou vöër voëvduusent Frang verkoupe. Et möss waal hü noch séë, waïl möëre wäärde ver versatt!“ Derr Vadder ho jo di voëvduusent Frang geschpaart, mä e saat, e möss terösch métt sinn Vro drövver kalle.

De Modder saat: „ Dat-tönnt fer! Esunne Kammjong Tsigerätte éss en Milljuën wäärt! Di Tsigerätte verkloppe ver ä Oëke, änn dé Kammjong wäärt fer béï ene Buër kwiit.“ Mä derr Vadder woër te bang. E woss neet, wu e dé Kammjong aunderschtélle köss, änn-e saat ouch: „Wänn de Ammerekaaner es schnappe, da schéëte di es, of-fer koëme joërelang ä gene Topp.“ Do saat-e Modder: „No hä ver ens Milljonäär wäärde könne, änn no hass-tou géïn Kuraasch!“ Mä derr Vadder saat märr: „Dou haas-tech förrege Wéëk allt genoch gelaïst!“

Iich woss néït, watt-e damétt maïnt, änn do vertaut de Modder: „ Ä gen Gosspertschtroët sönnd ouch Ammerekaaner änne su Huus, änn jéddesch Kiër wi ech da verbéïkoëmt, vrodde esunne Schwarrte: ‚ No Cognac? I give Cigarettes and Chocolate for Cognac!’ Iich ho allt lang géïne Konnjakk mië, mä ech ho waal noch en léëch Konnjakkflaïsch, médd-et Étikätt änn dréï Schtääre dropp.

Iich di Bubbel voll Tië gedoë, derr Schtopp dropp, alles fië togepläkkt änn no di Ammerekaaner. Wi di di Flaïsch soëge, paggde di mech en Schtang Tsigerätte änn dréï Taafele Schokkelaat änn en Tüüt, änn ië di di Flaïsch oppmaake kosste, léïp iich ewäkk, datt mech de Vokke vloëge. Wänn di mech kréëge häë, di häë miich kaut gemakkt! Mä saïtämm bänn ech neet mië dörrech gen Gosspertschtroët gegange!“

Hôessëlts is a Low Dietsch dialect spoken in Belgian Limburg in the small city of Hoeselt. It’s dying out, but a dictionary of it was recently published.

Aeres, Æres or Ourish is a West Central German Central Franconian language spoken around the German-Dutch border area that is closely related to, but very different from, Limburgish. It is spoken in several villages in the Dutch provinces of Gelderland and Overijssel and in the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen.

It has 600 speakers, but there were formerly many more. Most speakers are elderly. Some say it is part of Dutch Low Saxon, others that is close to Limburgish, and others that it is close to Frisian, so its classification is quite confused. Some people say that the whole idea of this language is a fraud since good sources are hard to find, but this seems questionable. On the other hand, the existence of this language has not been well proven.

South Guelderish/Kleverlandish is a Low Franconian language consisting of South Guelderish spoken in Netherlands and and Kleverlandish spoken in Germany. It is part of Meuse-Rhenish, and hence is transitional between Low Franconian (Dutch) and Low German (German).

Dialects include Rheden, Cleves (Kleve, Kleef), Oberhausen, Essen-Werder, Venlo, Venray, Liemers, Cuijk, Groesbeek and Zevenaar, and also the dialects of Northern Limburgish. The Cuijk dialect is typical. South Guelderish has a very heavy Frisian substratum. Based on its distance to AN alone (see Fig. 3) it must have difficult intelligibility with AN, probably along the lines of Zeelandic.

Overbetuws is a South Guelderish dialect spoken in the Upper Betuws region of Gelderland. Cities in this area include Valberg, Elst and Zetten. It was widely spoken until recently, when it began to decline. It is similar to Liemers.

Kleverlandish is South Guelderish spoken in Germany along the border with the Netherlands. Kleverlandish lects are quite a bit different from South Gulderish, but intelligibility data is lacking.

This dialect is often referred to as Kleverländisch. It is spoken southeast of Munster along the border with the Netherlands and north of Cologne in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Kleverlandish is not intelligible with Bergish (Harms 2009), as one is an analogue of North Limburgish and the other an analogue of South Limburgish. Venlo Kleverlandish is incomprehensible to most Dutch speakers. Kleverlandish is still widely spoken in Wesels, Germany, at least by the older generation (Anonymous 2009).

Venloos is an extremely divergent Dutch lect spoken in the city of Venlo in the center of Limburg Province. In the north of Limburg, Limburgish is no longer spoken, and the lect changes to more of a Gulderish/Brabantian type.

Venloos is interesting because it is so different. It seems to be transitional between Limburgish, Ripuarian German, and Gulderish/Brabantian. On purely structural grounds, there are suggestions that it is a separate language, but since we are dividing only on intelligibility and not structural grounds here, that won’t cut it. In the linguistic literature, statements are made to the effect, “If Limburgish is a separate language, then Venloos must surely be also.”

Venloos is regarded as Bergish or Neiderrbergisch is a form of Low Rhenish that is analogous to Limburgish. This is Limburgish spoken on the other side of the border in Germany, but the variety in Germany is a separate language.

There are two high level splits in Neiderrbergisch, Südniederfränkisch or Bergisch and Ostbergisch. However, both appear to be intelligible, so they are dialects of a single language (Harms 2009). The following nonbolded entries are all dialects of Neiderrbergisch Low Rhenish.

Ostbergisch or East Bergisch is spoken around Mülheim an der Ruhr, Saarn and Gummersbach. Gummersbach is a dialect of this language. All dialects are intelligible with Düsseldorver Platt Bergish (Harms 2009). Ostbergisch has a close relationship with the Sallands Gelders-Overijssels Dutch Low Saxon dialect spoken in Zutphen, however, the two are not completely intelligible. Dialects include Duisburg and Wuppertal.

Mülheim an der Ruhr is the classic form of Ostbergisch spoken in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia), Germany. It is quite different, but it is still intelligible with the other dialects.

Saarn Mülheim an der Ruhr is spoken in the Saarn District of Mülheim an der Ruhr, Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia), Germany, but it differs considerably from the standard version of Ostbergisch. Nevertheless, it is fully intelligible with the other dialects.

Bergish is one of two high level splits in Neiderrbergisch. It is definitely not intelligible with Cleves Kleverlandish (Harms 2009). This language is based on Low Rhenish but has acquired a heavy Ripuarian layer such that speakers feel that their speech somewhat resembles the Ripuarian language Kölsch, which is nearby (Harms 2009).

There are various dialects of this language, including Krieewelsch, spoken in central Kresweld, Ödingsch of Uerdingen in Krefeld, Metmannsch Platt of Mettmann, Düsseldorver Platt of northern and central Düsseldorf, Vogteier, spoken in Nieukerk, Solinger Platt of Solingen, Remscheder Platt of Remscheid, Rotinger Platt of Ratingen, and Wülfrother Platt of Wülfrath which is located between Düsseldorf and Wuppertal. Solingen, Krieewelsch and Wülfrath are all mutually intelligible (Harms 2009). It is also spoke in Neuss, Remscheid, Mochengladbach and Heinsberg.

Düsseldorver Platt is intelligible with Ostbergisch but not with South Guelderish, Limburgish or Aachen German. Düsseldorver Platt has 6

Düsseldorver Platt is mostly only spoken by older people these days, who nevertheless keep it very well alive. Middle-aged people have passive competence, but often not active, and young people may lack either, though some can hear the language.

Solinger Platt is a form of Bergish spoken in Solingen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The link leads to a description of it and a transcription of a short story in the dialect. It is fully intelligible with Düsseldorver Platt (Harms 2009).

References

Anonymous. Wesels Kleverlandish native speaker, Wesels, Germany. Personal communication. July 2009.

Anonymous. Antwerps, AN and Verkavelingsvlaams speaker, Antwerp, Belgium. Personal communication. January 2010.

Berns, J.B. 1991. “De Kaart van de Nederlandse Dialecten”, in Herman Crompvoets and Ad Dams, eds., Kroesels op de Bozzem. Het Dialectenboek, Waalre:24-27

DeEllis, Jonathon. Dutch-English translator and former Venlo resident for 10 years. January 2010. Personal communication.

Felder, Lianne. May 2015. Resident of Groningen City, Netherlands, ABN speaker. Personal communication.

Gooskens, Charlotte & Heeringa, Wilbert. 2004. The Position of Frisian in the Germanic Language Area. In: Gilbert, D. &  Schreuder, M. &  Knevel, N. (eds.), On the Boundaries of Phonology and Phonetics, 61-87. Klankleergroep, Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, Groningen. Dedicated to Tjeerd de Graaf.

Gooskens, Charlotte and Kürschner, Sebastian. 2009. On the Low Saxon Dialect Continuum – Terminology and Research. In Lenz, Alexandra N.; Gooskens, Charlotte and Reker, Siemon (Eds.). Low Saxon Dialects Across Borders – Niedersächsische Dialecte Über Grenzen Hinweg, Zeitschrift fur Dialektologie und Linguistik. Beihefte 138:9-27.

Gooskens, Charlotte; Kürschner, Sebastian and van Bezooijen, Renée. Intelligibility of Low and High German to Speakers of Dutch. Dialectologia (submitted for publication, not yet published).

Grondelaers, Stef. Linguist, the Netherlands. Personal communication, August 2009.

Harms, Biggi. Düsseldorf Bergish native speaker. Personal communication. March 2009.

Heeringa, Wilbert. 2004. How Easy Is It For Speakers of Dutch To Understand Spoken and Written Frisian and Afrikaans, and Why? In: J. Doetjes and J. van de Weijer (eds). Linguistics in the Netherlands 22:13-24.

Houwer, Annick; Remael, Aline and Vandekerckhove, Reinhild. July 2008. Vandekerckhove Intralingual Open Subtitling in Flanders: Audiovisual Translation, Linguistic Variation and Audience Needs. Journal of Specialized Translation 10.

Hinrichs, Erhard; Gerdemann, Dale and Nerbonne, John. Undated. Measuring Linguistic Unity and Diversity in Europe. Project Proposal. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

Köhler, Pascal. Eschweiler German and German native speaker. Personal communication. January 20, 2015

Nerbonne, J. W.; Heeringa, E.; van den Hout, P.; van der Kooi, S. Otten, and van de Vis, W. 1996. Phonetic Distance Between Dutch Dialects. In: G. Durieux, W. Daelemans, and S. Gillis (eds.). CLIN VI, Papers from the Sixth CLIN Meeting. Antwerpen. University of Antwerp, Center for Dutch Language and Speech, 185-202.

Smith, Norval. Linguistics professor, the Netherlands. Personal communication. March 2009.

ter Denge, Martin. Twents native speaker, Rijssen, the Netherlands. Personal communication. November 2009.

Tulipan, Laszlo. Stolberg German native speaker, Stolberg, Germany. Personal communication. April 2013.

van Bezooijen, Renée and van den Berg, Rob. 1999. Taalvariëteiten in Nederland en Vlaanderen: Hoe Staat Het Met Hun Verstaanbaarheid? Taal en Tongval 51(1): 15-33.

Zweers, Steven. Dutch native speaker, the Netherlands. Personal communication. March 2009.

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Why Did I Get a Degree in This Hokey Field Anyway?

About the title, I received a Masters Degree in Linguistics (ESL option) from a California state university in 1994. I actually publish in the field even though I do not have a PhD. A paper of mine just made it through two separate peer reviews, including one that had some of the top people in the field (they have Wikipedia pages). A version translated to a foreign language will appear soon in a quality academic Linguistics journal, and then a very long (80 pages) version with maps that I and an artist also created will be published in a volume of a 4-5 part Linguistics book series. Both will be published in the Near East. I also sit on the review board of a refereed academic Linguistics journal, also out of the Near East.

I am friends with some fairly big names in the field (or at least in some subfields), and I talk to them occasionally.

The more time you spend talking to linguists, the more you start thinking that the whole field is stark raving bonkers. Many questions that you could ask ordinary Joe Blow on the street about linguistics, he could give you a straightforward, commonsensical answer that “most everyone knows,” that is, in all probability, correct.

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, the nerdy eggheads in the ivory tower are going to disagree with you and tell you that you are wrong. So the eggheads know what the Average Joe does not? Nope. Average Joe knows what he’s talking about. The eggheads have their heads up their overdegreed hinds, as is so often the case.

This is so much the case in the soft sciences, and Linguistics is one of the softest of the soft sciences.

If you going to degree in Humanities, you may as well degree in Literature or English or something like that. Those fields don’t pretend to be scientific. You get a degree, and then you write papers on Keats or Byron or whoever, and none of it’s very controversial. No one is pretending to be a scientist. It’s all just a bunch of opinion. Was DH Lawrence a great writer? Who knows? Some say he was, some say he wasn’t. The reputations of these guys go back and forth, but no one analyzing this stuff ever pretends to be a scientist.

The soft sciences are so much worse. In the hard sciences we can actually prove things, and generally there isn’t a lot of debate going on one way or the other at least once something gets proven. You either proved it or you don’t, and that’s that. If you prove it, fine, most folks agree. If you don’t, fine, most folks agree there too. Sure, there is a lot of debate about things that are not proven yet, but no one ever says that something is not provable or can never be proven!

The soft sciences are a bunch of the silliest, most PC eggheads you can imagine running about screaming, “We can’t prove it! We can’t prove it! We can’t prove it!” Hardly anything can ever be proven in the soft sciences (except their politicized PC theories of the day, which, truth be told, can’t be proven either), and the soft sciences are ecstatic about this.

Whenever we can more or less prove something real and not PC-nothingness, the soft science field usually degenerates into an insane argument about whether or not it was really proven.

Truth is that most of these fields are jokes. Sociology, Psychology, African-American Studies, Feminist Studies, Anthropology, Linguistics, Pedagogy, Queer Studies – it all gets more and more useless. Even Political Science has some serious weaknesses.

Economics has long been a black hole of theory. They don’t call it the dismal science for nothing.

Just to give you an example from Economics, the idiocy and madness that just blew up the whole US economy and screwed the whole rest of the world happened because people in the US were following the latest and greatest economic theories of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School.

If you go to Economics School, you get taught that Chicago School is now the proven way that Economics works, and following Chicago School theory will make everything all groovy. No it won’t. It will blow up the whole economy.

But even after the blowup, the Chicago School crowd went on like nothing had happened, fitting the facts to the theory instead of otherwise. Turns out that Friedmanite Economics had worked just fine, and the reason for the blowup was that the economy had not been not allowed to go full bore Friedmanite enough.

Actually, it was evil government that blew up the economy. Or the niggers*. Or the spics*. Or the spics and the niggers. Or something. Or whatever. Even when their theories blow up in their faces, they still go on blissfully asserting how great they work.

Let’s look at Sociology. According to Marxist political science, now transplanted to liberalism and Cultural Marxism/Cultural Left/Political Correctness (pick your term) at large, the reason that, say, Blacks and Hispanics lag behind in many areas, or  – have excessive pathologies in others, is due to racism. The entire society accepts this as fact. Yet never is it even examined.

Who says that the problems of these groups are due to racism? Prove it. They have never proven that all of these problems are due to racism. But they don’t have to. That’s soft science.

For Blacks in particular, they have a number of problematic issues specific to their group. What’s the cause of these problems? Slavery! They was enslaved! How long ago? Long ago. 150 years ago. And all of the problems of Blacks today are caused by this nebulous “legacy of slavery.” Everyone accepts this. Huge government programs are set up to combat this mysterious legacy. Can we prove it? Of course not.

Is the Third World messed up? Sure it is. And why is that? Say, because of the humans who live in the Third World? Logical answer, no? It turns out that it’s because they got colonized some time ago. Dey done got colonized! Can we prove that colonization did them in? Of course not. But we don’t need to. We’re social scientists!

Let’s look at some areas of Linguistics that Joe Blow accepts, but eggheads don’t.

Most of the linguists’ assertions below were taken from the newsgroup sci.lang, where some of the most annoying linguist jackasses on Earth hang out. Nevertheless a number of the linguists who infest that site are very well-known in the field, and some even have Wikipedia entries. Others have authored well-known books in the field. Others are highly regarded Linguistics professors. I will highlight all of the sci.lang assertions with a footnote.

Joe Blow will tell you that some languages are relatively harder to learn for say, an English-speaking L2 learner, and others are easier to learn. Some of the harder languages for an English L2 learner, many folks would agree on, might be Hungarian, Polish, Finnish and Mandarin.

Linguists don’t agree.1 2 To them, easy and difficult languages are not definable, and therefore any language is as easy to learn as any other. Polish, Finnish and Mandarin, instead of being the mind-bogglers everyone knows they are, are actually no more difficult to learn than say any other language. Or maybe they are the hardest of all. Or maybe they are in between. Or this or that.  Or whatever.

It turns out Tsez is just as easy to learn as Malay! Who knew? Or wait, maybe it isn’t. Or maybe it is. Or maybe we can’t prove that. Or maybe we can’t prove anything.

Most people agree that kids learn languages much better than adults. In fact, we’ve proven that there’s a Critical Period for learning languages, with the window starting to close after age 7, then finally closing around age 14-18. The period is apparently neurological. That this period exists is patently obvious to anyone awake and thinking.

The whole time I was getting my degree, most of my professor-fools insisted that there was no Critical Period. Adults could get a language just as easy as any kid.2 Well, why don’t they then? The reasons were not neurological but psychological.2

They had a whole laundry list of ridiculous reasons why adults do more poorly at this. There’s some preposterous device called the “affective filter” that effects adults but not kids somehow. Adults have all this anxiety about learning languages, yet kids, for some bizarre reason, do not. The lame theories went on and on.2 I actually had to study very hard to learn all this nonsense and regurgitate it back at the idiots who were teaching it to me.

The reason Linguistics refused to accept a Critical Period is because linguists are often in the business of teaching adults languages or if not, they are busy teaching people how to be language teachers. EFL and ESL degrees are offered only by Linguistics Departments, or at least that’s where I got mine. All of my ESL teachers were professors in the Linguistics Department. All of the major ESL theorists are linguists. None are nonlinguists. Saying adults are never going to get as good as kids screws up the whole project, so they lie and say it’s not true.

Ask anyone – are some languages more complicated than others? Are some complex and some maybe simpler, less involved and less insanely convoluted and difficult? Joe Blow says sure.

A simple test case would be verbs. English has five verb forms – steal steals stole stealing stolen. Many Amerindian languages have over 1,000 forms for each and every verb. That right there implies some increased complexity and difficulty.

Turns out linguists say that all languages are equally complex or equally simple, and anyway, we can’t define simple or complex, so the whole argument is moot.1 2 Navajo’s as straightforward as Esperanto.

Most educated folks will tell you that some languages are more regular than others, the others being more irregular.

Turns out it’s not true, the linguists tell us. All languages are equally regular or irregular, and anyway, there’s no way to define “regular” or “irregular”.1

Well, don’t languages have rules, and the degree to which they follow the rules indicates their regularity, and the degree to which they don’t indicates their irregularity? Joe Blow says sure.

Nope! Not according to the linguists!

Turns out there is no way to define “rules.” Further, there is no way to define “exceptions” either. No such thing as rules, no such thing as exceptions. There are no languages that have many complex rules but are regular and others that have few rules but are irregular. There are no languages that are exception-ridden because we can’t define exception.1 I guess all languages are equally rule-governed or exceptional!

Is it possible that, as languages become widely spoken, they start to simplify, as English has lost most of its case, almost all of its subjunctive, the dative pronoun “whom”, merged four 2nd person pronouns into two and has seen “It is I” constructions fall out, among many other things? I would argue that as speakers get more modern and civilized, there is a need to get your point across as quickly as possible, time being money in a fast-paced society and all.

Whereas, more primitive hunter-gatherers spend much of their time sitting around, and, being highly intelligent, are bored. So possibly they enjoy using their often frighteningly complex language as a way of exercising their minds and being creative. This was what one of my professors taught me anyway. At the very least, it’s an interesting theory, and it makes sense intuitively.

Nope, apparently not. It’s not possible for a language to simplify because I guess we can’t define the blasted word or something. Anyway, who says the above is a simplification process? (I do.) It could well be that the language is getting more and more complicated, no? 2 (No, I don’t think so.) Who says primitive languages are often insanely complex? (I do, for one.) Define complexity. Define simplicity.1 You can see where this is going.

Few Americans are versed on the subject, but there has been a lot of research in recent years setting out an excellent case that the Chinese and Japanese writing systems are unnecessarily complex, convoluted and difficult, that they are hard to learn and take much longer to learn than alphabetical forms, that it is hard to add new foreign loan words in a character based system, and that as society becomes more technical, they become more and more of a hindrance.

A number of these researchers suggest that these crazy writing systems are actually economically harming these countries.

Well! This theory is just not PC! You see, in Linguistics, you can’t be all evil and White and stuff and go around dissing other folks’ (non-Whites) precious ‘lil languages. In the case above, this is just evil White racism attacking those poor Asiatic rice eaters.3 Turns out my field says that there are no good or bad writing systems; they’re all just fine for whatever folks are using them.3 Isn’t that dumb?

Ask your average Joe, what’s a dialect and what’s a language?

“Well,” he says. “California English and Massachusetts English are dialects, and Mandarin and Spanish are languages.”

Sure.

Nope! The linguist eggheads have decided that there is no such thing as a dialect and no such thing as a language.1 If you ask any linguist or consult any linguistic textbook on the language/dialect question, you will hear this retarded statement. There is no way to determine linguistically what is a language and what is a dialect. The difference is sociological and political, not linguistic.1 2Then you will get some silly examples like the Chinese “dialects” (really the Chinese “dialects” are more like 2,000 separate languages) and the stupid divisions of Shtokavian in the Balkans. Then you get the ridiculous Weinreich quote about armadas and lects.

So there are no linguistic definitions for the terms dialect and language. It’s all political.1 2 So, really, Spanish and Mandarin could really be dialects of one language, but California English and Massachusetts English could possibly be separate languages, as far apart as Ket and Warlpiri. Because, uh, you know, it’s all, like, political and stuff, dude.

Suppose we say that at a certain degree of structural differentiation, you have two separate languages. Nope, no can do. Define degree of difference. How will you measure it? Impossible.1

Suppose we say at

But we have measurements that we’ve been testing and refining for 50 years now.

Sorry, do not pass go. Who says they really work? Prove that they really work. Who says they are reliable? Prove it, prove it, prove it.1

Further, there is no way to define mutual intelligibility, and since MI measures are measures of intelligibility of some lect, apparently we can’t measure intelligibility either! Because individual variation and lying and bilingual learning and other nonsense.1

The notion that we cannot measure listener intelligibility of lects leads to some interesting conclusions. So if I say I have 10

Are you starting to see some insipid patterns in this splendiferous array of over-educated, egghead, useless junk theory that digests down to an endless fog bank where nothing much at all can be discerned?

Why did I even waste my time getting a degree in this useless field full of mumbo-jumbo speaking propeller-head fools? Looking at the theoretical state of our field, I don’t think that your average citizen should listen to a single thing that linguists say about anything. We don’t seem to have anything intelligent to say to your average person about language or much of anything else for that matter.

At the end of the day, the blue collar rednecks are redeemed. They’ve always scorned domehead nerds in university offices who talk in riddles and seem to not know anything about anything when it comes down to it.

“Want to know the answer to a simple question?” the redneck rhetorically asks. “Ask Joe Blow on the street.”

Don’t ask some pointy-headed egghead who probably doesn’t even know what he’s talking about.

*Used sardonically

1From the well-regarded and famous linguists on sci.lang.

2A commonly held belief in the field.

3A major book came out 10-20 years ago suggesting that the Asian character based systems, Chinese in particular, were inefficient, unnecessarily complex and led to incomplete learning. The book also suggested that nations using these systems were being harmed economically. This book was completely destroyed by the PC Cultural Left types who overwhelming infest the field of Linguistics. Which is really too bad, as I think he had some good points.

Mutual Intelligibility Among the Turkic Languages

Turkic is a large family of about 40 languages stretching from Turkey all the way to China. Most of the languages are pretty close, and it’s often been said that they are all mutually intelligible, and that you can go from Turkey all the way to the Yakut region of Siberia and be understood the whole way.

This is certainly not the case, although there is something to it. That is because the languages, while generally not above 9

The truth is that mutual intelligibility in Turkic is much less than proclaimed.

Azeri is spoken in Azerbaijan. Turkish and Azeri are often said to be completely mutually intelligible, but this is not true, though the situation is interesting. The two are not mutually intelligible. The far eastern dialects of Turkish are closer to Azeri than to Turkish. Turkish has an average of 6

Intelligibility is increasing now now due to increased contact. Nowadays due to exposure to Turkish TV, most Azeri speakers can speak Turkish well, and due to exposure to Azeri TV, Turks understand a lot more Azeri than they used to.

Kazakh and Kirghiz are also close, enough to be one language, with intelligibility over 9

Tatar and Bashkir are even closer than Kazakh and Kirghiz and they are best seen as a single language, with intelligibility of over 9

Uzbek and Uyghur are fairly close, but they are still probably only 65-7

Uzbek and Kazakh are not mutually intelligible, but there is an intelligible dialect between them.

Tofa and Tuvan are not mutually intelligible, but there are intelligible dialects linking them. Both are spoken in Russia in the same region as Altai below.

The truth is that Altai and Uzbek are not even intelligible within themselves.

Altai is spoken in the Altai region of Russia where China, Russia and Mongolia all come together. Altai is split into North Altai and South Altai, separate languages.

Uzbek is split into North Uzbek and South Uzbek, separate languages.

Azeri is split into North Azeri and South Azeri, although the two are mutually intelligible, there are large differences in phonology, morphology, syntax and loan words. Nevertheless, they are very mutually intelligible, with intelligibility at 9

The Oghuz languages are said to be fully mutually intelligible, but that’s not really the case. The question of the intelligibility of Turkmen with Azeri and Turkish is controversial, as some sources say that they are mostly mutually intelligible. Intelligibility testing is warranted.

Turkish has uncertain intelligibility with Crimean Tatar. Crimean Tatar speakers say that Turks cannot understand their language (Dokuzlar 2010). However, Turkish speakers say that Turks and Crimean Tatar speakers can converse without too many problems. However, while mutual intelligibility is high, it is probably under 7

Turkish has high, but not full, intelligiblity of Karaim. Turkish intelligibility of Karaim may be 65-7

The intelligibility of Turkish with South Azeri may be quite high, on the order of 9

The intelligibility of Turkish and Khorasani Turkic is probably around 4

Practically speaking, Turkish has low intelligibility with Kazakh (Kipchak Branch), Uyghur and Uzbek (Uyghuric branch) and Khakas (Siberian branch). Turkish-Kazakh intelligibility is surely less than 4

Turkic has effectively

The intelligibility of Turkish with the Central Asian Turkic languages like Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrghyz and Turkmen is much exaggerated.

Speakers of these languages who went to study in Turkey said they had problems with the Turkish language. It’s true that Turkish TV is not much watched in the Central Asian Turkic nations, but the main reason for that is that Central Asian Turkic speakers can’t understand it. They can’t even understand the simplified Turkish used in these broadcasts. After the fall of the USSR, people from these new nations visited Turkey, but they had to bring interpreters with them to communicate.

In truth, the whole notion of the mutual intelligibility of all Turkish is a pan-Turkic conceit. Pan-Turkism is a noxious form of ultranationalism headquartered in Turkey. It says that all speakers of Turkic languages are part of a Greater Turkey and often uses ominous irredentist language implying that Turkey is going to conquer all the Turkic lands and take them back.

The Pan-Turkics have a snide attitude towards other Turkic speakers, insisting that they all speak dialects of Turkish and not separate languages. This snideness is resented by speakers of other Turkic tongues.

A number of Turkic languages are nothing more than dialects and not full languages.

Ukrainian Urum is a dialect of Crimean Tatar, and Georgian Urum is a dialect of Turkish. Ukrainian Urum is spoken in SE Ukraine, and Crimean Tatar is spoken on the Crimean Peninsula.

Salchuq is an Azeri dialect. It is spoken in Iran.

However, Qashqai, also spoken in Iran, often thought to be an Azeri dialect, is in fact a separate but closely related language with 75-8

Gagauz has high intelligibility with Turkish. However, Bulgarians say that when Turks visit the Balkan Gaguaz communities in Bulgaria, the two groups have a hard time understanding each other. SIL says that not only Gagauz but also Balkan Gagauz Turkish are separate languages, but one wonders what criteria they are using to split them. The Gagauz are Christians living in Moldavia who strangely enough speak a Turkish language with many Christian Slavic loanwords. The Balkan Gagauz Turks live in Bulgaria, far west Turkey, Greece and Macedonia, but most of them live in Bulgaria.

Kumyk is said to be Karakalpak is so close to Kazakh, with 9

Chulym and Shor are often thought to be dialects of a single language. Not only is this not true, but Shor itself is two separate languages – Mrass Shor and Kondoma Shor – and Chulym is also two separate languages – Lower Chulym and Chulym. Chulym and Shor are spoken north of the Altai Mountains in the Ob River Basin near the city of Novokuznetsk.

Further research regarding the intelligibility of these languages is indicated.

References

Uygar Dokuzlar, Crimean Tatar speaker. April 2010. Personal communication.

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The Present Status of the Irish Language

This website is a very interesting overview of the state of the Irish language today. It’s a publishing house that does nothing but publish Irish language books and tapes and books and audio on the subject of the Irish language. One would have expected them to go out of business long ago, but not only are they still in business, but they seem to be doing well. I was amazed that there was even a market for Irish language literature, but apparently there is.

There are quite a few authors of Irish language novels, poetry, short stories, children’s books and even non-fiction! The first four, one might expect, but the last was really a shocker. Some of these are published in bilingual Irish-English editions.

The reports of the death of Irish language, like that of Twain, are premature. And looking back historically, it seems that Irish was in its worst shape about 100 years ago or so. Since then, things have improved dramatically. Of course Ireland was a British colony at the time, the Brits waged an all-out war against the Irish language which was very succcessful.

With independence in 1920 came a role for the Irish language. At some point, 12 years of schooling in Irish was required, and it still is. One of the strange things about the argument that Irish is dying is that all Irish schoolchildren get 12 years of Irish education. How could Irish possibly be dying if the whole country spends the entire school career studying Irish? It doesn’t make sense.

It’s true that Irish come out of that school system with less than perfect knowledge of Irish, but around 5

I believe that until recently, all Irish students had to pass a proficiency test in Irish to graduate from high school, but I think this has been junked. In 1968, the requirement to pass an Irish proficiency exam to work for the Irish government was trashed, as it was very unpopular. Getting rid of some of these unpopular requirements will probably benefit the language, as all these strictures did was make people hate Irish. There have been loud calls for getting rid of the mandatory 12 years of Irish study, but I don’t think that’s going down yet.

The great thing nowadays is state funding. There is a lot of state funding going into Irish. There are Irish TV stations and radio stations, but the nation’s largest Irish language daily recently closed its doors. There are Irish monthlies and weeklies though.

After high school, if you go on to university, there are vigorous Irish Language programs at the university level. Many people major in Irish, and there are quite a few jobs for translators. What exactly they are translating, I’m not sure, but I think that all major government paperwork must be in Irish and in English. There are calls to get rid of this too on grounds that it’s a waste of money, but it isn’t going to happen. A large number of Irish speak Irish every day, often sprinkling their Hibernian English with Irish words and phrases.

There has long been an obsession with Gaeltacht, the region of Ireland where Irish is the native langauge of children. This area has been shrinking for over 100 years and now exists mostly in the far west of the country. On a map, the Irish speakers appear to be falling off into the sea. It’s true that the Gaeltacht is in bad shape, but it doesn’t make sense to say that the death of the Gaeltacht will be the death of Irish.

In recent years, the government has actually been paying Gaeltacht speakers to speak Irish, which seems odd. There has been quite a bit of fraud associated with this program, and the money isn’t much anyway.

The Gaeltacht has been the poorest part of Ireland for 100 years now. The result was constant emigration from the Gaeltacht. Now that it’s doing better economically, a new curse has befallen the area. Non-Irish speakers are moving into the Gaeltacht! There are alarming that the speech of young Gaeltacht Irish speakers is full of English words. Non-Irish speakers complain about not being able to understand Irish signs in the Gaeltacht.

However, in recent years, many Irish language learners go to the Gaeltacht in the summer to study Irish and interact with Irish speakers. There are also now Irish medium schools, mostly in the Gaeltacht, but also outside of it, in which all, most of much of the curriculum is delivered in Irish. These are now running into problems as immigrants move to the Gaeltacht and insist on English-medium education for their kids.

Even if the Gaeltacht dies, there will still be a huge number of Irish speakers, mostly 2nd language speakers, with varying levels of proficiency. Many of these speak and write at a native to near native level. Some of the famous Irish language authors are actually second language speakers.

There have been loud calls to create a Modern Irish out of the Irish language, that is, to make its grammar and syntax less irregular and difficult and more sane and easy to learn. This has run into a lot of obstacles, but it’s a good idea. Irish grammar is still stuck in the 15th Century and there’s a lot of needless difficulty and irregularity in there.

One of the best books on the site was an overview of the state of the Irish language today by a leading scholar of Irish. He concluded that at least we know that in 100 years, Irish is assured of being alive and well. After that, everything is up for grabs. So Irish has at least a secure century ahead of it. But being alive in 100 years is better than what’s expected for 9

That a language in as tenuous a shape as Irish has a better future than 9

Scientific Studies of Intelligibility in Scandinavian Languages

I’ve been asked to provide this information from some folks who, incredibly, are insisting that Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are all one language. What makes it even more painful is that at least one of them is a Swedish-language speaker.

I suppose it makes sense that people are outraged by the splitting of these closely related languages. Many Swedes and Norwegians can understand the other language pretty well. I think a lot of this is because they have actually learned the other language, but at any rate, intelligibility between these languages varies. In order to communicate well, Swedes and Norwegians often have to speak slowly. There are all sorts of other variables, but I think that in cases of 90-10

I only had one set of figures for the Scandinavian languages, but these were attacked because, while detailed, they lacked a reference for who or what study, if any, came up with those numbers. In looking around, I quickly discovered that there have been intelligibility studies with the Scandinavian languages. Unfortunately, they don’t look good for the case that this is all one language. The data is from a study conducted by the Nordic Cultural Fund from 2002-2005. Subjects were young people under the age of 25. The results can be seen here:

The highest score of all is Faroese-Danish. Faroese understand 82.

From www.faeroe.fo

Faroese is the official language of the ‘fólkaskúli’, and it is the first language that students are taught. Students then begin to learn Danish in third grade and English in fourth grade. In eighth and ninth grade, the curriculum consists of a number of compulsory subjects which prepare the students for upper secondary school and a range of optional subjects from which the students can choose. At the end of ninth grade, students need to pass an exam that gives them entry to upper secondary schools.

The worst scores of all are for Iceland. Icelandics understand only 3

Although not tested, the intelligibility of Faroese and Icelandic is one way. The Faroese understand the Icelandic, but not the other way around. This is due to dipthongization and other phonological things in Faroese.

Malmö is located in Scania in the south of Sweden where they speak a dialect called Scanian that is closer to Danish. That is why Malmö understands Danish better than Stockholm does.

Based on the notion that >9

Are they close? Sure. Are they all one language? Sure doesn’t look like it. Could a speaker of one quickly pick up another one. Quite possibly.

References

Delsing, Lars-Olof and Åkesson, Katarina Lundin. 2005. Håller Språket Ihop Norden? In Forskningsrapport Om Ungdomars Förståelse Av Danska, Svenska Och Norska. Data above is from Figure 4:11: “Grannspråksförståelse bland infödda skandinaver fördelade på ort”, p.65, and Figure 4:6: “Sammanlagt resultat på grannspråksundersökningen fördelat på område”, p.58.
Maurud, Ø. 1976. Nabospråksforståelse I Skandinavia. In Undersøkelse Om Gjensidig Forståelse Av Tale- Og Skriftspråk I Danmark, Norge Og Sverige. Nordisk Utredningsserie 13. Nordiska Rådet, Stockholm.
Smith, Norval. Linguistics professor, Netherlands. July 2013. Personal communication.
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Interesting Website

Note: Repost from the old blog. Delphi.lv. It looks like a big Latvian site. Took me a little while to figure this linguistic puzzle out. Click here and you get the Latvian version of the page, and click here and you get the Russian version of the same page. What I found very interesting was the very large number of commenters on the Russian version of the Latvian page. It’s well known that all of the Baltic states have been hostile to the Russian population (unfortunately seeded in the Baltics as settler-colonists in order to flood out the native Baltic peoples and water down Baltic nationalism) and the Russian language. I believe that upon independence, Latvia was as much as 4 Wikipedia to the rescue. Looks like Russophones and native Russians were 4 Wow. No wonder Latvian nationalists are pissed. Obviously this goes back to the USSR when Russian was the national language of Latvia and a lot of native-Latvian speakers also speak Russian too. With 8

“The Russian language is robust in Latvia, as Russian-speakers are a majority or plurality in many cities, almost all Latvians speak Russian as well as Latvian and culture and media from Russia have a strong presence in Latvia. Indeed, the legacy of Soviet Russification policy was still evident in the results of the 2000 census in Latvia, which showed that knowledge of Russian is still more widespread than knowledge of Latvian in Latvia: 8

Awesome Paper on Intelligibility Testing

It’s dated, from 1974, but not a whole lot has changed ever since. There is a lot of interesting information in this book. For instance, when you get widely divergent results, it’s probably a result of bilingual learning. Say you speakers of Lect A on nearby Lect B. Suppose the males score 9 It’s important to test speakers individually. Testing in groups results in cases where a strong personality, often male, may lie and say that he can understand all of the text. Everyone else just agrees with him. The strong personality says this because he thinks it’s insulting to admit that he can’t understand the lect. The others, especially women or weaker men, just go along because he’s a strong personality. Ability to understand another lect is independent of age, sex, status, income and other variables. That right there is pretty interesting. Anyway, here is the book for download on this site. It’s over 200 pages, so it’s a mouthful.

References

Casad, Eugene H. 1974. Dialect Intelligibility Testing.‭ Summer Institute of Linguistics Publications in Linguistics and Related Fields, 38. Norman: Summer Institute of Linguistics of the University of Oklahoma. xiv, 201 p.

Sociolinguistics and the Language – Dialect Question

My linguistic projects, whereby I split languages like Chinese and German into over 100 different sublanguages, are starting to make some people mad. However, I also have some support from top Germanists and Sinologists. For German, I am now at 173 languages, and it’s a little embarrassing to have come up with such a large number. But I wanted to split off many more, and only stopped because I lacked a good scientific basis for doing so. For instance, Ripaurianists regularly speak of “the 150-400 Ripaurian languages.” 125 of the Ripaurian languages are so different that they actually have had dictionaries made for them. I only split off 5 Ripaurian languages. The way I see it is that I am being very conservative instead of very liberal in splitting. For Chinese, I now have some Chinese informants. If I used them as deeply as I would like to, I would have way more than 343 Chinese languages. Here is a Cantonese informant: Me: Is it true that there are many dialects of Cantonese? Cantonese speaker (CS): Yes, very, very many. Me: How many? CS (Shaking his head hopelessly): Thousands. Me: Thousands? Are you sure? You sure it’s not hundreds? CS (Shaking his head hopelessly): Nope. Thousands. It must be. Me: Can they understand each other? CS (Shaking his head hopelessly): Nope. Me: Not really? CS (shakes his head). Me: How do they communicate? CS: Mandarin, or Standard Cantonese. I have only split off 15 Cantonese languages, but I wonder about what this guy said. In many cases in Europe, you find that speakers of separate dialects find the differences so great that they will simply switch to a large common language such as French or Spanish to get their points across. At the same time, they often continue to insist that they are speaking dialects and not languages. They also say that they can understand each other, but it’s hard and a lot of work, and there are misunderstandings. This usually means something like 85-9 Speakers of these lects often make comparisons to the US. The differences between Bavarian and German, or Sicilian and Italian, are no greater than between a Texas, Boston, California, Midwest, Southern and New York accents. The problem is that the comparison is not valid. The differences between most US dialects are miniscule compared to even fairly close European dialects. In the US, dialects generally differ only on phonology. In Europe, they differ on phonology, morphology, syntax and especially vocabulary. The “dialects” of Swiss German almost completely replace the vocabulary of their fellow “dialect”, Standard German. There is almost no parallel in the US. Can you think of a situation in the US where you tried to speak to another native US English speaker, but his dialect was so strange and incomprehensible that it would make more sense to switch another common language, say German, French, Italian or Spanish? It’s unthinkable. The sociolinguists also insist that the language or dialect question is strictly political and outside of linguistic science, as there is no scientific way to determine what is a language and what is a dialect. I think this meme needs to be explicitly taken on. Do they really mean that we may as well say that Mandarin and English are dialects of one language and not separate languages? This seems to be what they are saying, and if so, we really need to take this irrationality head on. Look at the “socio” in front of sociolinguistics. Look familiar? This subfield has long been the hang out of the Politically Correct Brigade afflicted with extreme physics envy and lack of scientific rigor. This is one place where we linguists have let the mushy headed soft science of the sociolinguists get the best of us. Intelligibility testing, despite the obfuscations of the sociolinguists, at least is solid science. Check out this state of the art paper (download on this blog here) on intelligibility testing if you disagree. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site. Donations are the only thing that keep the site operating.

Some Scientific Intelligibility Studies

I put separate language <9

Iberian - Oral
Asturian - Spanish:              8
Spanish - Portuguese:            5
Galician - Portuguese:           8
Italian - Oral
Venetian - Venetian*:            9

German - Oral
German - Texas German            9
German - Swabian:                4
German - Badish:                 4
German - Kolsch (Ripaurian):     4
German - Bavarian:               4
German - Moselle Franconian:     4
German - Upper Saxon:            4
German - Luxembourgish:          4
German - Hessian:                4
German - Low German:             4
German - Alsatian:               4
Pennsylvania German - Hutterite: 7
Mennonite - Hutterite:           5
Bavarian -  Bavarian***:         5
Kirchröadsj -  Hommersch**       2
Dutch - Oral
Dutch - Groningen:               90.

English - Oral
US English - Glascow Scots:      5
US English - Edinburgh Scots:    3
US English - Scots (average):    42.
Scandinavian - Oral
Norwegian - Danish:              7
Norwegian - Swedish:             6
Swedish - Danish:                3
Scandinavian - Written
Norwegian - Danish:              91.
Norwegian - Swedish:             87.
Swedish - Danish:                6

*Maximum distance between any two Venetian dialects. **Ripaurian lects at opposite ends of the Ripaurian dialect chain. ** Central Austrian Bavarian vs. Viennese Bavarian. Commentary: Clearly, Asturian and Spanish are separate languages, and so are Galician and Portuguese. These two are rather controversial, with Spanish speakers claiming Asturian as a Spanish dialect and Portuguese speakers claiming Galician as a Portuguese dialect. The much-vaunted mutual intelligibility between Spanish and Portuguese leaves much to be desired. Spanish speakers say that Italian is much lower than Portuguese. I figure 20-3 Venetian is clearly a single language. All of the German lects listed above are separate languages except for Texas German, which is just a dialect of German. Groningen is just barely a dialect of Dutch, but Groningen speakers want to see themselves as speakers of a separate language, so the world is going alone. Here, sociolinguistics trumps intelligibility testing. Scots is clearly a separate language from English. There is  no debate about that anymore from a scientific point of view. It’s simply not intelligible with US English, period. The much-discussed mutual intelligibility between the Scandinavian languages leaves much to be desired, though between Norwegian and the rest, it is higher than, say, Portuguese and Spanish. Between Danish and the rest and Swedish and the rest, it is lower than between Spanish and Portuguese. Intelligibility between Swedish and Danish is ridiculously low. It’s incredible that people discuss the mutual intelligibility of these two languages. Swedish and Norwegian speakers get subtitles on Danish TV. If they are so intelligible, what’s with the subtitles? Scandinavian speakers often resort to English to speak to each other. If they are so intelligible, why resort to English? Based on the data, it is completely untrue to say that Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible, though Norwegians can generally easily understand the other Scandinavian languages if they are written.

Notes

Fig. A. An understanding of the spoken languageNorwegians understand 8 Danes understand 6 Norwegian and Swedish have 6 Norwegian and Danish have 7 Norwegian has combined 6 Swedish and Norwegian have 6 Swedish and Danish have 3 Swedish has 4 Danish has 3 Danish has 6 Danish has 5 Fig. B. An understanding of the written language Norwegians understand 8 Swedes understand 8 Danes understand 8 Norwegian and Swedish have 87. Norwegian and Danish have 91. Swedish and Danish have 6 Norwegian and Swedish have 8 Norwegian and Danish have 9 Norwegian has combined 91. Swedish and Norwegian have 8 Swedish and Danish have 6 Swedish has 77. Danish has 6 Danish has 8 Danish has 7

References

Kilborn, Emily SJE. The Politics of Language in Europe. Case Studies in Scots, Occitan, Moldovan, & Verbose‐Croatian. European Studies. Middlebury College.

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A Look At the Catalan Language

Updated September 25, 2011. Catalan is a Romance language that is most closely related to Occitan. Although Occitan-Catalan started forming in 700-800, Occitan and Catalan are usually thought of as splitting from 1000-1300. However, scholars such as María del Candau de Cevallos and others present evidence that Catalan was already breaking away from Catalan-Occitan as early as the 700’s-800’s. An alternate method is to see Catalan as part of something called Ibero-Romance together with the Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula and to put Occitan in Gallo-Romance together with French and related tongues. It’s better to just avoid this and create a whole new category called Catalan-Occitan.

The Catalan-speaking world. Catalan is mostly spoken in Catalunya and Valencia in Spain, a bit in Aragon in Spain, and also in far southwestern France in Rousillon. The three shaded islands on the map are the Balearics. The tiny shaded area on the island at the far right represents Alghuerese Catalan spoken in Alghuero, Sardinia.
The Catalan-speaking world. Catalan is mostly spoken in Catalunya and Valencia in Spain, a bit in Aragon in Spain, and also in far southwestern France in Rousillon. The three shaded islands on the map are the Balearics. The tiny shaded area on the island at the far right represents Alghuerese Catalan spoken in Alghuero, Sardinia.
There is a common notion running about that Catalan speakers can understand Occitan. Although surely it differs with exposure, in general, Catalan speakers have a hard time understanding Occitan. Intelligibility between the two languages is probably on the order of 5 The same type of folks (I call them “everyone can understand everyone” people or lumpers) also insist that Castillian and Catalan are mutually intelligible. If this were the case, there would be no grounds for a political fight in Catalunya from the Castillian speakers who do not wish to have Catalan shoved down their throats. The truth is that Castillian speakers can only understand about 4 There are claims that Catalan and Portuguese are mutually intelligible. This is not the case. Catalan is also not intelligible with Aragonese. In the Medieval Period, Aragonese and Castillian were considered to be unintelligible to Catalan speakers in the Catalan region. Aragonese is not even intelligible within itself. Why would they be able to understand Catalan too? Catalan, when spoken, sounds like a cross between Castillian and French. There is a lot of intense language politics swirling around Catalan. It is the language of an autonomous region of Spain called Catalunya. The fascist Franco tried to kill the language by forbidding its use. Spanish nationalists are just as horrible as French nationalists, if not worse. As an example, there is a tiny part of Portugal that Spain has occupied for hundreds of years. As per a treaty of 1812, Spain was required to hand over this bit of territory. In the 197 years since then, they have flatly refused to do so. An imperialist Spain continues to occupy a few small islands of frankly Moroccan territory off the coast of Morocco in defiance of Moroccan insistence that they are Moroccan territory. After the fascists were toppled, Spain was arm-twisted into making Galician, Basque and Catalan into official languages. During the dictatorship, Galician and Catalan were referred to as dialects of Castillian. Recently, Aranese, an Occitan dialect, was also recognized. There are other languages in Spain such as Asturian, Leonese, Murcian, Andalucian, Extremaduran and Aragonese. These are not yet recognized by the imperialist Spanish state. There are problems in Catalunya. At home, about 1/2 the population speaks Catalan and 1/2 speaks Castillian. However, 9 For this, Castillian speakers have called them “fascist,” but it’s only normal for them to try to save their language, which is not necessarily doing all that well. In Andorra, the official language is Catalan, and this is also the most widely spoken language. It is the only officially independent Catalan speaking country on Earth. French and Castillian are also widely spoken. All dialects of Catalan are said to be mutually intelligible. However, people say that about the Occitan lects, about Dutch and German, about the Scandinavian languages, about Spanish and Portuguese, on and on, so that is not very reliable. Further, there is a strong politicization movement similar to Occitan whereby a language in trouble wants to see its various lects as unified under a single language. The notion is that splitting will further endanger a troubled language. Hence, there is a tendency for Catalan nationalists to scream that they can easily understand every variety under the sun. That’s ultimately a politicized response, and it is not scientific. It’s only natural to wonder whether Catalan is more than one language, so an investigation was undertaken. Method: Literature and reports were examined and Catalan-speaking informants were interviewed to determine the intelligibility of the various dialects of Catalan. >9 Results: The result of this investigation was to split Catalan from 1 to 2 languages. Below, separate languages are in bold, and dialects are in italics. Discussion: Catalan is a very tight-nit language family. The vast majority of Catalan lects can more or less understand each other with few problems. The Blaverist Movement is politically motivated and is not linguistically justified.
A great map of all of the languages and dialects of SW Europe. It's in Spanish, but you should be able to understand it anyway. All of the Catalan dialects are listed here in dark green.
An excellent map of the languages of southwest Europe. Catalan languages and dialects are in dark green.
There are many dialects of Catalan. Some are: Rousillonese (Northern Catalán), Valencian (Valenciano or Valencià), Balearic (Balear, Insular Catalan, Mallorqui, Menorqui and Eivissenc), Central Catalan, Alghuerese, Northwestern Catalan (Pallarese, Ribagorçan, Lleidatà and Aiguavivan). Northern Catalan is actually spoken in France by about 100,000 speakers. It receives no support from the Jacobin French state. Northern Catalan is a very divergent Catalan dialect, although Catalan speakers say that they can understand it just fine. It has a lot of French influence in the lexicon. Northern Catalan sounds very much like French to Southern Catalan speakers. About 4 Rousillonese is the main dialect of Northern Catalan spoken in France. It’s in better shape than many say it is, but the future prospects are probably not too good. Rousillon is close to the Occitan language Languedocien. There is a tremendous to-do over Valencian. Valencian activists, the Blaverists, insist that Valencian is a separate language from Catalan. This is a political issue, not a linguistic one. Linguistically, it is long settled. Valencian is simply a dialect of Catalan, and the two varieties have about 9 Balearic, Alghuerese and Rousillon (Northern or French) Catalan are much further from Central Catalan than Valencian is. Balearic is spoken in the Balearic Islands and is said to be quite different. Majorca Catalan is somewhat hard to understand for Valencians. It is even hard for Barcelonans to understand. Central Catalan speakers say they go to the islands and communicate without problems, however others say that the old Catalan language of Ibiza is hard for Barcelonans to understand. Some Balearic speakers, like Valencians, say they speak a separate Catalan language. Intelligibility between Balearic and Catalan Proper is said to be about the same as between Catalan and Valencian, which would mean that Balearic is a dialect of Catalan. We will tentatively split this off due to reports of intelligibility issues, but this remains very controversial. The best way to sort this out would be through intelligibility studies as have been done with Valencian. Central Catalan is the main variety and is the most widely spoken. This is the variety of Barcelona, and this is what the literary language is loosely based on. Catalan TV usually uses this dialect. Northwestern Catalan is extremely divergent. Ribagorçan is transitional to the Aragonese language and is sometimes called a dialect of Aragonese. The truth is that the eastern part is Catalan transitional to Aragonese, the western part is Aragonese transitional to Catalan and the central part is Benasques. Pallarese is also spoken in the same area and is said to be very different. Aiguavivan is spoken in high valleys of Pyrenees and is very different. Related varieties called Chapurriau are spoken in Castellote, Torrevelilla and Matarraña nearby in Aragon and across the border in Valencia. These are mixtures of Old Castillian, Castillian, Valencian, Aragonese and a bit of Catalan. The Valencian element predominates. Although these lects are intelligible with Catalan proper, the speakers insist that they do not speak Catalan. Benasquese is spoken in the same region as Aiguavivan and is often said to be a Catalan dialect. It is not. It is either a transitional lect between Catalan and Aragonese, a divergent Aragonese dialect, or a separate language in between Aragonese and Catalan. At any rate, however we wish to characterize Benasquese, it is not a Catalan dialect. All of NW Catalan appears to be intelligible with the rest of Catalan. At last we come to Algherese, spoken in Sardinia in the town of Alghero. This language is dying out, but there are still 20-30,000 speakers, mostly older people. Many say that structurally, this is by far the most divergent variety of Catalan, created when Catalans landed on the island over 500 years. Algherese has been split from Catalan for over 500 years now. The lect sounds like Medieval Catalan and furthermore, lots of Sardinian language has gone in. Catalan speakers say it sounds like Italian. Reports indicate that Catalan travelers to Alghero can still understand Algherese quite well, albeit as a somewhat Medieval form of Catalan. However, the venerable Encyclopedia of Endangered Languages “Catalan”, Chapter in Posner, Rebecca, Green, John N. Trends in Romance Linguistics and Philology, Volume 3. La Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton.
Moseley, Christopher. 2007. contribution to support more of this valuable research.

A Reclassification of the Occitan Language

Updated May 29, 2015. Long, runs to 65 pages.

Map of Occitania showing the major dialect divisions including Vivaro-Alpine.
Map of Occitania showing the major dialect divisions including Vivaro-Alpine.
According to Ethnologue, Occitan is currently 1 language. This reanalysis will expand Occitan from 1 language to 22 languages. Occitan, or Langue d’Oc, is spoken in general in a swath across the south of France. It goes a bit into Spain in the Pyrenees and into far northwestern Italy. There is Occitan an outlier in Italy. There are various classification methods for Occitan. One is to differentiate between Langue d’Oil (French) and Langue d’Oc (Occitan). I do not agree that Occitan is particularly close to French. Occitan is about as far from French as Spanish and Italian are. I would put the Oil languages (including French) in a Northern Gallo-Romance and Rhaetian and Italian Gallo-Romance into a Southern Gallo-Romance with Arpitan as transitional between the two.
Another view of Occitan.
Ibero-Romance is a different split altogether. Occitan is better placed into a separate Romance category that I would call Catalan-Occitan. This analysis sees Occitan and Catalan as a singular branch of Romance. Catalan-Occitan is then properly put into Ibero-Romance. It also recognizes that Occitan and Catalan were once a single language stretching across the south of France and into northwestern Spain. This language was very widely spoken, and at one time in the Middle Ages it was very widely used. It is “the language of the troubadours,” the wandering minstrels who plied their trade across Southern Europe in the Middle Ages, though in truth, the troubadours mostly came from Limousin and wrote their songs in a sort of Poitou-Limousin dialect that no longer exists.
Another map of Occitania. This one is a bit harder to read as it is largely in dialect, but if you study it a bit, it makes more sense.
Another map of Occitania. This one is a bit harder to read as it is largely in dialect, but if you study it a bit, it makes more sense.
From 500-1200, there was really only one language – Catalan-Occitan. Occitan only started distinguishing itself after 1200. At the moment, Southern Languedocien has the closest relationship of all to Catalan – in fact, they are intelligible. Gascon is then the next closest to Catalan, but intelligibility data is lacking. The rest of Occitan is more distant from Catalan. Catalan speakers have a hard time understanding Auvergnat, Limousin, standard Languedocien and Provencal. It is not the case, as often stated, that Catalan and Occitan are intelligible, but they are close. Catalan and Occitan probably have about 5
A Third Map of Occitania. This is the best-laid out of all, and it is the easiest to read and make sense of.
A Third Map of Occitania. This is the best-laid out of all, and it is the easiest to read and make sense of.
Occitan has been on decline for a long time, as the Langue d’Oil has been been supplanting it for centuries. The decline began in 1539 when a French king ordered that langue d’oil be the official language of all of France. Despite a brief revival in the 1800’s, it’s been downhill ever since. Occitan speakers did not start speaking French in large numbers until 1885. Before that, there was only minor French influence on spoken Occitan. Since 1885, French influence on spoken Occitan has increased, in some cases dramatically. The codification of the Parisien Langue d’Oil language as Standard French with the victory of the French Revolution and the corresponding fascist Jacobin war on all other languages caused Occitan to recede further into the background. The French government is reactionary/fascist on the subject of language. The Jacobin Constitution baldly states that “French is the language of the state” and allows for no other languages. Hence, Occitan receives no state support in any way. Occitan still has about 8 million people who can understand it and 3 million who can speak it to one degree or another. Estimates of the true number of speakers range from 1-3.7 million. Occitan is surely a modern language and does not lack for vocabulary – it has between 250,000 and 1 million words, though many say that this is an exaggeration. Occitanists like to say that Occitan is all one language, but this is a political statement. They say this in order to unite the dying language and prevent it from splintering. The Occitanist position is increasingly popular. For instance, Wikipedia is calling all of the Occitan languages “dialects.” There are two centralized ways of writing all Occitan dialects, one based curiously enough on a Medieval standard. Around 1850, an Occitanist poet named Frederic Mistral invented a standard based on his own Provencal language, but this solution has not caught on well. The second is neo-Occitan, a new koine language created more recently. Occitan is spoken most often by those over 50, except in Italy and Spain. Occitan is only protected in Spain and Italy, where the respective forms of Aranese and Transalpine Provencal are spoken. If you hear Occitan, it sounds like some curious cross between Spanish and French, sort of the way that Catalan sounds. It’s not true that Occitan is one language as the Occitanists centered in the south of the region insist. The intelligibility among Occitan lects seems to be as I suspected. People with exposure to the other lects can pick them up pretty quickly, but someone who has never heard the other varieties has a hard time understanding them. This is called learned bilingualism. If learned bilingualism is the rationale for saying that Occitan is a single language, it stands on precarious scientific grounds. Nevertheless, intelligibility in Occitan remains a very controversial subject. On the one hand, speakers say they can’t understand speakers of the same lect a few miles away; on the other hand, Occitan speakers say they can understand totally different varieties from far away very well. At this point, it is time for some scientific intelligibility testing to sort all of this contradictory information out. Intelligibility testing has already been done with Occitan. It did find high, but by no means complete, intelligibility between major Occitan lects (Bec 1982). This suggests that intelligibility among Occitan lects is marginal, possibly on the order of 8 Others have put the figure about where I did – at 70-8 It is often said that French and Occitan speakers can communicate well enough. This is not the case. There are many French speakers living in Occitania who say that they cannot understand a word of Occitan. A good overview of Occitan is here. Method: Literature and reports were examined to determine the intelligibility of the various dialects of Occitan. >9 Results: This treatment expands Ethnologue’s 1 Occitan language to 22 Occitan languages.
A great map of all of the languages and dialects of SW Europe. It's in Spanish, but you should be able to understand it anyway. The Occitan languages are the light green stretching across all of southern France.
A great map of all of the languages and dialects of SW Europe. It’s in Basque, but you should be able to understand it anyway. Occitan dialects are listed in light green in the area around Southern France.
Gascon is a Southern Occitan macrolanguage spoken in southwestern France and barely over the border into Spain. It has 256,000 speakers, 250,000 in France, but other figures put the number at 500,000. Gascon has some affinities to Basque – it is said to have a Basque substrate – but it is not close to Basque at all. Gascon is probably closer to Catalan than anything else (even closer than it is to Aragonese), however, there is resent both being referred to as speakers of a dialect of Occitan and what they see as the cultural imperialism of Occitan politics centered in Toulouse. In France, Gascon is spoken in the departments of Landes, Gers, Hautes-Pyrénées, the eastern parts of Pyrénées-Atlantiques and the western parts of Haute-Garonne and Ariège, and it is still used actively by many people. 50 years ago, near La Réole, France, there were still monolingual Gascon speakers among the older people. People were still being brought up speaking Gascon as recently as the early 1980’s. However, in France, it is not being taught much to children. Gascon speakers have a hard time understanding Limousin, and Languedocien speakers say it’s hard to understand Gascon and vice versa. However, it is easier for Gascon speakers to understand Languedocien (though intelligibility is still difficult) than vice versa due to the French-like regularity of Languedocien. For example, “How are you?” is “Quin hes?” and “Cossi fas?” respectively in Gascony and Languedoc. It goes on like that through the Gascon-Languedocien lexicon. It’s clear we have two completely separate languages here. Around Agen, there is a transition between Guyennais, Gascon and Languedocien. One village can understand the next, but once you get 10-15 miles away, things get difficult. Provencal speakers say Gascon is a foreign language. Gascon speakers can’t understand a word of Auvergnat. It makes sense to split Gascon into a West and East Gascon. The border would run from Artix-Pau in the south to Marmande-Agen in the north. East Gascon would then start at around Pau and Agen and West Gascon at Artix and Marmande. These distinctions represent the variant influences of Bordeaux in the west and Toulouse in the east. West Gascon is spoken from Bordeaux in the north to the Basque country in the south. In the east, it runs to Artix in the south and to Marmande in the north. Its differences with East Gascon revolve around the influence of the large city of Bordeaux on the language. Dialects include Bazadais, Marmandais, Bordalés and Médoc. Bazadais is spoken around the town of Bazas, famous for its cows. Marmandais is spoken around the town of Marmande. Bordalés is spoken around Bordeaux. It is probably in very bad shape. It was declining badly even 50 years ago. There is actually a transitional Occitan-langue d’oil (Saintongeais) region around Bordeaux. The region around Bordeaux is notorious for its sharp linguistic breaks. One early chronicler estimated that the distance between West Gascon Limonde and Saintongeais-speaking Pays Gabay north of Limonde to the Saintonge border was 5 There is evidence of a Landes is a West Gascon language spoken in southwestern maritime France in the Aquitaine region. As it is not even intelligible within itself (it differs so much that it is hardly intelligible even from village to village), it must be a separate language. Some say that Landes is nearly a dead language, but others say that it is still spoken in the villages. The coast near Biscarosse gave up Landes long ago, but now even in the inland villages like Rion de Landes and Parentis en Born it is hard to find a speaker. The real Landes died around 1950. The current dialect is very Frenchified. East Gascon is spoken from Pau to the Ariege River in the south and from Agen to Toulouse in the north. It represents the influence of the large city of Toulouse. Even between the cities and Pau (East Gascon) and Artix (West Gascon), which are very close together, communication is nearly impossible. This language is probably in very bad shape. It is probably extinct in the Rivière-Basse region around the towns of Marciac, Plaisance and Maubourguet and in the Vic-Bihl region just to the west around Riscle. In Tarbes, Lannemezan and Lourdes, speakers are almost impossible to find. The eastern border with Languedocien is in the Ariege. Neraqués and Lomagne Gascon are two East Gascon dialects. Neraques is spoken in Nerac, just southwest of Agen in the Lot et Garonne. Lomagne Gascon is spoken to the far northeast of the Gascon language, southeast of Agen down towards Toulouse. Pyrenean Gascon is a macrolanguage that is unintelligible with the Gascon of the plains. This language is the most divergent member of Occitan, probably due to very strong Basque influence. Some would put it outside of Occitan proper altogether. The borders of Pyrenean Gascon run from the Ariege in the east to Bearn in the west and to the Spanish border (except in the Aran Valley). Pyrenean Gascon is nearly a dead language in France, only spoken by In Bearn, Pyrenean Gascon is still heavily used. In 1994, fully 2 It makes sense to split Pyrenean Gascon into three separate languages. Gascon speakers in the east of Bearnais have a hard time understanding the speakers in the west of Bearnais. They also have a hard time understanding the Couserans spoken in the Upper Ariege near the Foix and Andorra. Although it makes no linguistic sense, Bearnese is often split off a separate dialect of Pyrenean Gascon. Dialects of Bearnese include Aspés, Ossau Bearnese, and Palois. Bearnese is spoken in Bearn. West Pyrenean Gascon covers the western part of Bearn. It is here that there is the heaviest Basque influence of all. Speakers in the east of Bearn can understand speakers just to the east in Bigorre and Lourdes better than they can the speakers of western Bearn. Oloronais (Aspois) is a dialect of Béarnais spoken in Oloron that borders on Souletin Basque. The actual linguistic border between Béarnais and Basque is in between Aramits and Tardets. Central Pyrenean Gascon covers most of the Pyrenean Gascon region from eastern Bearn all the way to Ariege. Intelligibility is poor with both western Bearn and Couserans in the Ariege. Bigourdan is a dialect of Central Pyrenean Gascon spoken in Bagneres de Bigorre region. Subdialects are Argelès, Aure, Bagnères, and Tarbais. Bagnères is spoken around the city of Bigorre itself, and Tarbais is spoken around the town of Tarbes. Eastern Pyrenean Gascon is spoken in the far east of the Pyrenean Gascon region by the border with Languedocien and Catalan and over the border into the Aran Valley. Central Pyrenean Gascon speakers have a hard time understanding those in the Couserans in the Upper Ariege by Foix, Rousillon and Andorra. Dialects include Aranese, Ariegois, Commingese, Couseranais, Sauratois, and Contadels. Aranese is an Eastern Pyrenean Gascon dialect spoken by most of the 6,000 people living in the Aran Valley in the Spanish Pyrenees, where it has official status. It has Spanish, Aragonese and old Catalan influences, but at the moment it is under very heavy Catalan influence such that many Occitanists regard it as an outrageously degenerated dialect. Aranese is intelligible with Commingese across the border in France. Aranese is not intelligible with Spanish, French, Catalan or the rest of Occitan. Pujolo and Canejan are Aranese dialects. Ariegois is a Pyrenean Gascon dialect spoken in the Upper Ariege. Sauratois is an Ariegois dialect spoken in the Saurat region northeast of Tarascon on the Ariege River. Couseranais is an Ariegois dialect spoken in the Couserans northwest of Andorra. It still has a few speakers. Contadels is an Ariegois dialect spoken in Vicdessos north of Andorra. There is a very heavy Languedocien and Catalan influence on this dialect. This is actually a Gascon-Catalan transitional dialect. Southern Occitan is a branch of Occitan that stretches across Southern France near the ocean. It includes Languedocien, Maritime Provencal, Nissart, and Rhodanian Provencal. This branch has more Iberian influence in the west and more Ligurian Southern Gallo-Romance influence in the east. Languedocien is a Southern Occitan macrolanguage that has 1 million speakers in an area in a line going from north of Andorra – Aude – Fenoullens – Leucate in the south (border with Catalan), from Toulouse to Oust in the west (border with Gascon), in a line running from Toulouse – Albi – Agde in the north (border with Guyennais) and at Bassin de Thau in the east (border with Provencal). Languedocien sounds like a mixture of Spanish and French in the north or Spanish and Catalan in the south. Languedocien speakers have a hard time understanding Limousin, Auvergnat and Gascon. Languedocien speakers have a hard time being understood by the Provencal speakers in Toulouse. Along with Provencal, this language is more conservative and closer to the Medieval Occitan. If you try to learn Occitan now as a second language, you will learn Languedocien. Attempts to standardize writing of Languedocien have not been successful. An Occitan koine is being promoted out of the University of Montpellier that some Occitan speakers have referred to as an Occitan Esperanto. All across Languedoc, most of the older people and many young people still speak Languedocien. In Carcassone, all street signs are bilingual in Occitan, Occitan is an obligatory subject for primary school students, and there are 22,000 speakers in the city. Nevertheless, it is not being learned much by children in general in the region as a whole. It makes sense to split Languedocien into a Ibero-Languedocien and a North Languedocien (or Franco-Languedocien), the first more like Catalan, Spanish, Gascon and Aragonese and the second more like French and the rest of Occitan. North Languedocien is a Languedocien language with borders running from Toulouse – Albi – Bassin de Thau in the north and east and around the Bages-Sigues Lagoon in the south. This language lacks the strong Catalan influence of Ibero-Languedocien. Instead, it has more French influence. There are various dialects within North Languedocien that are quite divergent. Dialects include Besierenc, Narbonés, Carcassés, and Pezenas. These are spoken around the cities that they are named after and are said to be unrecognizable from one region to the next, but until we get specific intelligibility data, we can’t split them. Ibero-Languedocien is spoken in the south from Toulouse and Albi down through the Ariege, the Foix, the Aude, the Fenouillines and over to the coast at Leucate, possibly extending north to Carcassonne and Narbonne. This language is rooted in Iberian phonetics. Ibero-Languedocien speakers feel that they have excellent communication only with Catalan. With the rest of Occitan, they feel that they are speaking another language, and there are communication problems. Ibero-Languedocien is intelligible with Catalan. This dialect is the closest of all Occitan lects to literary Catalan and is spoken in the part of southwestern France right next to Catalonia. Ibero-Languedocien speakers can understand Catalan easier than they can understand Gascon. The border between Ibero-Languedocien and Catalan proper begins in the Languedocien-speaking Fenouillèdes along the Agly River. To the south, Catalan is spoken – to the north, it is Languedocien. But that boundary is fairly sharp. On the coast, the transition zone occurs from Leucate to Le Barcares and Salces. The true transition zone occurs in the area north of Andorra. The Catalan of Formigueres is basically the same language as the Languedocien of Usson just to the north. Tolosenc is a dialect of this language spoken around the city of Toulouse. It has Gascon influences. In the rural areas around Toulouse, almost everyone over 25 understands Tolosenc. In this area, many people over 40 were raised speaking Tolosenc as a first language, but most have forgotten it by now. However, in Toulouse proper, Occitan speakers have gone from 5 Agathois is a divergent Languedocien lect spoken on the coast town of Agde. It is very different from the Besierenc dialect spoken in Beziers and Vias, which were wine-growing regions. Beziers and Vias received many Spanish immigrants to pick grapes in the vineyards and received many more during the Spanish Civil War. As a result, Besierenc now has heavy Spanish admixture. But Agde, on the coast, received no Spanish influx, and now communication is sometimes difficult between Agathois and Besierenc speakers. Provencal is a very famous Southern Occitan macrolanguage that is spoken further east than Languedocien all the way to the Italian border. It has 200,000 speakers. Provencal is cannot understand the Mompelhierenc spoken in Montpellier, and there is marginal intelligibility with Nimes and Sète. People with one parent who spoke South Auvergnat and another who spoke Provencal were not taught Occitan because the lects were too different. This implies that even South Auvergnat has poor intelligibility with Provencal. Limousin speakers who move to the Provencal region say that the two feel very much like separate languages. Provencal speakers say that Gascon is a foreign language, they cannot understand Vivaroalpine and they even have a hard time with Languedocien. Provencal, along with Languedocien, is closer to the Medieval Occitan language and is more conservative. Dialects include Cévenol, Maritime Provencal, Marsillargues, Mompelhierenc, Bas-vivarois, Lunellois, Aptois, Bagnoulen, Barjoulen-Draguignanen, Canenc, Coumtadin, Foursquare-Manousquin, Grassenc, Marsihés, Maures, Castellane Provençal, and Sestian. Cévenol is spoken in the Cevennes Mountains north and northwest of Nîmes and is doing well. Maritime Provencal is spoken around the Cote d’Azur, is doing well and is widely spoken, especially as Marsillargues in Marseilles. Mompelhierenc, spoken in Montpellier, has heavy Languedocien influence. Bas Vivarois is spoken in the lower half of the Ardeche region. Lunellois is spoken in Lunel between Montpellier and Nimes and still has speakers. Aptois is spoken around the town of Apt north of Marseilles. Barjoulen-Draguignanen is spoken around the towns of Barjemon and Draguignan in the hills north of the French Riviera. Canenc is spoken around the Cannes. Grassenc is spoken on the French Riviera. Rhodanian is spoken around Arles, Avignon and Nîmes, is apparently not intelligible with the rest of Provencal and may be more than one language. Rhodanian speakers from around Nîmes say that they cannot understand other speakers from villages only 12 miles away. This is actually a Languedocien language that underwent Provencal phonetic changes in the late 1700’s, resulting in a Provencal tongue. This probably accounts for its diversity. Dialects include Arlaten, Bagnoulen, Camarguen and Nimoues. Arlaten is spoken around Arles. Bagnoulen is spoken around the town of Bagnols sur Centre. Camarguen is spoken around Camargue Bay. Nimoués is spoken in Nimes. Nissart is a Southern Occitan dialect spoken in Nice. It has very limited. Nissart is in very bad shape; it is a dying language mostly spoken by older people, when it is spoken at all. Dialects include Esteron, High Vésubie, and Northern Nissart. Mentonasq is a curious Gavot Alpine Provencal dialect related to Nissart spoken near Monaco in and near the town of Menton. It has a lot of Ligurian influences like Nissart. This is intelligible with Nissart and is apparently a Nissart dialect. This is best seen as transitional between Nissart and Intermelio to the east, a Ligurian dialect with strong Occitan influence. Studies have shown that Mentonasq is between Gavot Alpine Provencal (Nissart) and Royasque (Brigasc)-Pignasque (Ventimiglian) Ligurian (spoken in the Roya Valley in France and Pigna in Italy on the border), with an emphasis on the Occitan. About 2/3 of the words are Provencal. There are still those who insist that this language is basically Ligurian with strong over layer of Provencal. Intelligibility between Mentonasq and Ligurian Royasque is better than between Nissart and Royasque but is still somewhat marginal. Although it is close to Nissart, Mentonasq is also quite different from it. Monegasque is quite different from Mentonasq. It is mostly spoken by older people, fisherman and rural types. There is bilingual signage. But the language is in bad shape as the young do not speak it, and there are many tourists. Roquebrunasq is a dialect of Mentonasque, spoken on the Roquebrun-Cap Martin just to the west of Menton. It is somewhat different from Mentonasque. It is dying out. The similar dialects Gorbarin and Castellarois are spoken in Gorbio and Castellar. Gorbarin is particularly close to Mentonasc. Like Nissart, these are Gavot dialects transitional to Ligurian. Northern Occitan is a branch of Occitan that is spoken in the north of the Occitan region and also over by the Italian border. There are great differences between Northern and Southern Occitan. For instance, 3 One way to look at this is to say that the languages in this region – Limousin, Auvergnat and Vivaro-Alpin, are part of something called Medio Gallo-Roman, which is really in between the langue d’oc proper of the south – Gascon, Languedoc and Provencal – and the langues d’oil to the north and Arpitan to the east. Another way to look at it is to say that Northern Occitan is closer to Arpitan than to the rest of Iberian-dominated Southern Occitan. Limousin is a Northern Occitan macrolanguage spoken in France and has over 100,000 speakers. It is spoken in Limousin Province and over the western border into the far eastern part of Saintonge and the Perigord in North Acquitaine. North Perigord in Acquitaine has Saintongeais influences. South Perigord speaks Guyennais. Limousin is still widely spoken in the Limousin region and in northern Dordogne in Acquitaine. Limousin may have once been many separate languages, at least in the Dordogne department. Older residents in the Périgord Vert near Nontron report that from 1930-1970, it was not unusual for different villages to have Limousin dialects so different that one village could not understand the next, and they had to resort to the use of a koine. Gascon, Provencal, Languedocien and Auvergnat speakers say they cannot understand speakers of Limousin. Charente Limousin is a Limousin dialect that is very hard to classify. It extends from Confolens south to Aubeterre. This is an Occitan-Oil transition zone with an emphasis on the Occitan. So these are Limousin dialects transitioning to Charentais langue d’oil. Between Confolens and Ruffec around Chatain, there is a transitional dialect between langue d’oc and langue d’oil that is nevertheless intelligible with the Charentais spoken in Ruffec. This is probably a Charentais dialect transitional to Limousin. This province is generally langue d’oil speaking and has been so since the original Limousin speakers were eliminated by the Black Plague in the 1300’s and replaced by langue d’oil speakers, but the area around the Charente River in the far east of the province has long spoke Occitan and never underwent replacement. Saint-Eutrope and Montberonés are Charente Limousin dialects. Montberones is spoken in Montbron, and Saint-Eutrope is spoken in the town of the same name. South Limousin is a separate language spoken south of Haute Vienne in Limousin south to the Limousin border. It is closer to Auvergnat and Languedocien. Haute Vienne North Limousin speakers understand no more than 6 Corrèzese is a dialect of South Limousin spoken around the city of Correze. Correzese speakers can understand Auvergnat and vice versa. Corrèzese is best seen as a Limousin dialect transitional to Auvergnat. Sarladais is a South Limousin dialect spoken in Sarlat in Aquitaine just southeast of Limousin. It has strong Guyennais influences. Monédières Limousin, a variety of South Limousin spoken in the Monédières Hills near Correze, is a separate language. For one thing, it does not even appear to be intelligible within itself. Some varieties of Bas Limousin in the Monédières Hills near Correze have a hard time understanding each other. For another, Limousin speakers say they have a harder time understanding Monédières Limousin than they do Auvergnat as a whole. This is more than one language. Guyennais is a highly divergent lect, possibly a separate language, spoken in a swath across central Acquitaine, northern Languedocien and southwest Auvergnat. It is transitional between Gascon, Languedocien, Limousin and Auvergnat. In the South Perigord, the influences are Saintongeais, Gascon and Languedocien. To the east, the influences are Languedocien, Dauphinois Provencal and Auvergnat. In the north, the boundary with Limousin and Auvergnat is a line from Bordeaux – Bergerac – Carlux – S. Cerre – Latronquiere – southern border of Auvergne to the Ardeche border. To the south, Guyennais borders Languedoc along a line running from Castelsarrasin – Montalban – Cordes – Albi to the border of Languedoc at Millau and the Cevannes. Guyennais is still widely spoken. In Saint Cirq in Dordogne Department, all of the elderly speak Guyennais as a first language and continue to use it amongst themselves at all times. Although Guyennais is typically lumped under the rubric of Languedocien, others lump Guyennais in with Limousin, saying that there is no way that Guyennais-Limousin is the same language as Languedocien-Gascon. The best view is that Guyennais was close to Limousin and Auvergnat, but it underwent extensive Languedocienization caused by the expansion of Toulouse to the north from the 800’s to the the 1200’s. At the moment, it is probably closest to Limousin and possibly secondarily with Auvergnat. There is difficult intelligibility on the border of Guyennais and Gascon. Quercynois, Rouergat and Carladezien are not intelligible with Languedocien. Guyennais is very similar to the South Limousin spoken in Brive and South Auvergnat. Specific intelligibility data between Guyennais and Limousin and Auvergnat in general is not available. There is a strong tendency to want to split this off as a separate high level language within Occitan, but there’s no legitimacy to do so yet based on the available intelligibility information. Haut Quercinois, Bas Quercinois, Rouergat, Carladézien, Bergeracois, Agenais, Gevaudan, and Aurillacois are dialects of Guyennais. Quercynois (Carcinòl) is spoken in the Quercy in Midi-Pyrenees. Rouergat is spoken around the city of Rouerge. Carladézien is spoken in Auvergne and is still doing very well. It is transitional to Auvergnat. Bergeracois is spoken around Bergerac. Agenais is spoken in Agen and has Gascon influences. Gévaudan is spoken in the southern part of Lozère, and Aurillacois is spoken in the Aurillac. Both have Auvergnat influences. North Limousin, spoken north of Correze in Haut Vienne to the Marche and over to Nontron in the west, is a separate language. North Limousin speakers only have 6 Millevaches is spoken on the Millevaches Plateau south of Limoges. Lemojaud is spoken in Limoges. Monts de Blond Limousin is a North Limousin lect said to be so different from all other Limousin types that it must be a separate language. It is spoken in the Haut Vienne in the Monts de Blond region around Blond between Nantiat and Confolens near the Charente border. There is heavy influence from Charentais langue d’oil and Creusois. Nontronnais is a North Limousin dialect that is so unusual that it must be a separate language. It is spoken in the North Perigord region around the town of Nontron near the Saintonge border. It has heavy Saintongeais langue d’oil influences. Creusois (Marchois) is a language spoken in La Marche or the Croissant in north Limousin and over into Auvergne. It extends roughly from La Rochefoucauld in Charente to Saint-Priest-Laprugne just over the Auvergne border in Loire in the south and from Bellac in Limousin over to Montlucon and Moulins in Auvergne to the north. The eastern portion in Auvergnat underwent much more extreme changes than the western portion. It borders on and is influenced by the oil languages Berrichon and Bourbonnais in the north and east and Poitou and Charentais in the west but is intelligible with none of them. In the northeast, there is a 50 mile wide Creusois zone between Limousin and Berrichon. Some say it is a langue d’oil with heavy Occitan influence, but a better analysis is of a langue d’oc with heavy oil influence. To the southeast around Vichy, there is some Arpitan influence. This language is still widely spoken in places. 15 years ago, the dialect of Saint-Priest-la-Feuille in northern Limousin was still spoken by everyone over 40. A bit to the west, 15 years ago, Gartempaud, spoken in the village Gartempe, was still spoken by most residents over the age of 50. Dialects include Western Creusois, Eastern Creusois, Central Creusois and Montluçonnais. Montuluconnais is spoken around the town of Montlucon in Auvergnat. It is often thought to be a part of Limousin, but Creusois speakers have a hard time understanding Limousin. Auvergnat speakers cannot understand Creusois. There is poor intelligibility with Berrichon, a langue d’oil. This is basically an Occitan-Oil transitional dialect with an emphasis on Occitan.
Map of the Bourbonnais region in north Auvergne and southeast Berry showing Bourbonnais langue d’ oil, Auvergnat Occitan and Forez Arpitan.
Auvergnat is a North Occitan macrolanguage that has 1.35-1.5 million speakers. Auvergnat is spoken in reports indicate that nearly everyone over age 35 can speak Occitan, and perhaps 5 A neo-language called Aleppo (Literary and Pedagogical Auvergnat) has been created. It is used to teach students who come from a variety of educational backgrounds and by writers who wish to enrich their prose by using loans from other dialects. Every village has its own dialect, and there is often problematic intelligibility even from one village to the next. People who learn standardized Occitan fairly well are completely lost listening to Auvergnat. Auvergnat in general cannot understand Limousin, with the exception of the dialect spoken in Corrèze. The reason is that the phonetics, inflections and vocabulary of Limousin are completely different than in Auvergnat. Auvergnat speakers are completely lost with the Languedocien speech of Toulouse and Carcassone. Auvergnat speakers cannot understand Creusois. Auvergnat is utterly unintelligible to Gascon speakers. Auvergnat speakers cannot understand the Provencal spoken in Montpellier, and there is marginal intelligibility with Nimes and Sète. The Languedocien influence on these Provencal dialects is what makes them hard to understand for Auvergnat speakers. People with one parent who spoke South Auvergnat and another who spoke Provencal were not taught Occitan because the lects were too different, implying that South Auvergnat has poor intelligibility with Provencal. Auvergnat is closer to French than the rest of Occitan, and it has the strongest Arpitan influences of any Occitan language. There area two major splits – South Auvergnat or Upper Auvergnat in the south of the region and North Auvergnat or Lower Auvergnat in the north of the region, which are separate languages. The names upper and lower do not correspond with north and south here, which is curious. South Auvergnat is spoken from Mauriac in the west through Brioude in the center to Crappone sur Arzon south to the border of Auvergne. It has difficult intelligibility with the North Auvergnat spoken in Allier and Puy de Dôme. South Auvergnat is still in good shape, with 6 Dialects include Brivadois, Mauriacois, Yssingelais, and Sanfloran. Brivadois is spoken around Brioude and Sanfloran around Saint Flour. Brivadois cannot understand the North Auvergnat spoken in Allier and Puy de Dome. It is in between North and South Auvergnat but is best characterized as South Auvergnat. Mauriacois is spoken in the southwest in Mauriac, but it is very different from Aurillacois. It has some old influences from San Floran and Gevaudan. Yssingelais is spoken in Yssingeaux in far southeast Auvergne. It has strong Arpitan and Alpine Provencal influences. Some have classed this as an Alpine Provencal dialect, but this seems uncertain. Intelligibility data is lacking. San Floran is spoken in St. Flour. This is a very influential dialect, having influenced many nearby dialects. North Auvergnat is a macrolanguage spoken in Allier and Puy de Dome. It is close to the langues d’oil, especially Bourbonnais but is probably not intelligible with them. North Auvergnat is not doing well. Speakers of Brivadois, a South Auvergnat dialect transitional to North Auvergnat, have a hard time understanding the North Auvergnat of Allier and Puy de Dome, so it is separate from South Auvergnat. North Auvergnat, especially in the east, is possibly the most divergent lect in Occitan after of Gascon due to very heavy Bourbonnais and Arpitan influence. Some even think it is outside of Occitan proper altogether. North Auvergnat can be divided into two separate languages – Northwest Auvergnat and Northeast Auvergnat. The differences are so dramatic that they must be separate languages. Northeast Auvergnat is spoken in the eastern part of the North Auvergnat from Jumeaux and Arlanc north to the west bank of the Allier River near Vichy and Cusset. From Vichy-Cusset to the Loire border, Forez Arpitan was formerly spoken. North of Vichy-Cusset to the Champagne-Ardennes border, langue d’oil Bourbonnais used to be spoken. Northeast Auvergnat has very heavy Arpitan influences that make it so different from Northwest Auvergnat that it must be a separate language. In fact, Livradois speakers cannot understand Besse-en-Chandesse speakers. Livradois is a Northeast Auvergnat dialect spoken on the broad Lemange Plain in the east-central part of Auvergne bordering on Loire. In the southern part of Livradois around St. Antheme, there are strong Forez Arpitan influences. Northwest Auvergnat is spoken from about Champes sur Tarentaine to Lempdes north to Pionsat and Gannat. The heavy Arpitan influence on Northeast Auvergnat makes it so different that it must be separate from Northwest Auvergnat. And it is true that Besse-en-Chandesse Northwest Auvergnat speakers cannot understand Livradois Northeast Auvergnat speakers. Alpine Provencal (Vivaro-Alpine) is a macrolanguage, part of the Provencal macrolanguage, and is often considered to be a separate branch of Northern Occitan. An ocannot understand Vivaroalpine, so it is a separate entity. Dauphine Provencal (Vivaro-Dauphine) is a separate language within Alpine Provencal. It is spoken in the departments of Ardèche (except the north and the western border areas), Drôme (except the north) and the southernmost parts of Isère. Dialects include Ardechois (Mid Vivarois), spoken in the center of the Ardeche and Dauphinois or Drômois, spoken in the Drôme River area. Gerbier de Jonc is an Ardechois dialect spoken in the Ardeche region of that name. It differs greatly from the north to the south, with words changing from village to village. Other dialects are Albenassien, Albonnais, Annonéen, Southeast Ardèchois, Boutierot, Northeast Drômois, Southeast Drômois, Montilien, Privadois, Valentinois, and Vernoux-Doux. Privadois is spoken in Privas in the Ardeche. Montilien is spoken in Montelimier in the Drome. Albonnais, spoken in the village of Albon in the commune of St. Pierreville in the central Ardeche, was still resembles South Auvergnat. It is apparently not intelligible with Rhodanian or Maritime Provencal. Gavot Provencal is a divergent Northern Occitan language within Alpine Provencal in France. There are intelligibility problems between this and the Dauphine Provencal spoken in the Drome and the Ardeche such that the others say that Gavot is a mutually intelligible. Dialects include Molliérois, Embrunais, and Seynois. Molliérois is a dialect of Gavot spoken north of St. Martin Vesubie and Beaui near the Italian border. It differs significantly from the dialects of St. Martin Vesubie and Isola very close by. Embrunais is spoken in Embrun. Embrunais has problematic intelligibility with the Transalpin Provencal spoken in Briançon. Seynois is spoken in the town of Seyne and in the surrounding towns of Auzet Barle, Montclar, Selonnet, and Le Vernet. Transalpin Provencal is a Northern Occitan language, the Italian group of the eastern section of Alpine Provencal, spoken in the Piedmontese Valleys in the Alps along the northwestern Italian border with France and just over the border with France in the Briançon region. There are about 100,000 speakers in Italy, about 5 It is spoken in 14 Piedmontese valleys in the Alps (in the provinces of Cuneo and Torino) and in one community (Olivetta San Michele) and a few hamlets in the Liguria region (in the province of Imperia). A lot of parents in this region still pass Transalpin Provencal on to their children, but the language is declining, being replaced with Piedmontese or Italian. It is spoken in the highest valleys only, having been replaced in the lowest valleys first and then the middle valleys. The highest valleys often lack schools, courts, post offices, etc. The people live in homes that often lack heating and bathrooms and sometimes lack electricity. Of the young people under age 20, 40-5 In Italy, it is spoken in the upper valleys of Piedmont (Val Maira, Val Varacho, Val d’Esturo, Entraigas, Limoun, Vinai, Pignerol, and Sestriero) by speakers of all ages, but younger people are reportedly shifting to Italian. Nevertheless, there are reports that the number of speakers of this language has actually risen in recent years, and it is now recognized as an official language by the state of Italy. In the Estura Valley, Piedmontese (with heavy Transalpin Provencal influence) is spoken in the lower valley from Demonde up the valley to Aisone, and Transalpin Provencal is spoken from Aisone to the top of the valley. In this area, 10 Transalpin Provencal is not intelligible outside of the region. Escarton is a dialect of Transalpin Provencal that is spoken in France and Italy near the town of Briançon on the border of France and Italy where the Gavot Provencal, Piedmontese and Savoyard Arpitan languages all come together. All three languages influence this dialect, especially Savoyard, but at base it remains an Occitan dialect. It is spoken in the Cottian Alps. There are many different dialects included under the Escarton rubric. Briançon dialects include Viaran and Montegenevre. Escarton also includes Queyras, spoken around Abries and Aigilles in France to the southeast. In Italy, it includes Oulx in Oulx, Bardonecchia in Val Susa and Val Chisone in the town of Sestriere in Val Chisone. Escarton has difficult intelligibility with the rest of Occitan. It has better intelligibility with the Transalpin Provencal across the border in Italy than with the Embrunais Gavot of the lower valley in France. Gardiol is a diaspora Alpine Provencal language spoken in Guardia Piedmontese, an Occitan-speaking town in southern Italy. The town, located in the Cantabria region in Cosenza Province, was established in the 1300’s by people from the Waldensian or Vaudois Protestant movements who were fleeing Catholic religious persecution. They were thought to be heretics and were massacred in the 1300’s. The language is a Vivaroalpenc dialect formerly spoken in Briançon and in the Varaita and Pellice valleys of France. It is still taught from K-12 in school and has 340 speakers. Gardiol is under strong southern Italian influence. Gardiol is said to be incomprehensible to French Occitan speakers due to the fact that it has been diverging for over 700 years in isolation in Italy.
The outlandish costumes of the women of Guardia Piedmontese, Italy, based on clothing from the 1300's in southeastern France.
The outlandish costumes of the women of Guardia Piedmontese, Italy, based on clothing from the 1300’s in southeastern France.
There are more Gardiol speakers in Germany’s Württemberg, in the US (especially in North Carolina in the town of Valdese), in the Argentinian town of Pigüé, and in Canada’s province of Quebec. Intelligibility of these diaspora lects with the language in Italy is not known. References

Bec, Pierre. 1982. “Occitan”, in Posner, Rebecca and Green, John N. Trends in Romance Linguistics and Philology, Volume 3. La Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton.

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East Midlands Dialect of English

I just heard the parents of Madeline McCann, a little girl who tragically vanished, apparently while her parents were vacationing in Portugal, a couple of years ago, on Oprah . It looks to be an abduction by a child molester or a sexual psychopath of some sort. This case is weird as Hell, and I remember at the beginning they were suspecting the parents. Madeline and apparently her parents both come from around the city of Leicester in Leicestershire, in East Midlands, in the center of England. I always thought that the North English accents like Geordie and Scouse in Liverpool were the only ones that were hard to hear. But I had the damndest time making sense out of that hardcore East Midlands dialect! If they were right in the room with me, maybe I could make sense of it, but on TV, it was hard as Hell. I was definitely getting less than 9 Man, that’s one hardcore English accent. A great site is the BBC’s Sounds Familiar, with selections of hardcore dialects from all over the UK. The site has a poor layout and it’s hard to find the dialect samples, but if you click around a bit, they should show up. Even in England, many of the dialect samples had poor intelligibility to my ear. What’s interesting is that I lived in a tourist town for many years and we always had English tourists coming through from all parts of England, and I never had a hard time hearing any of them. Is it that the folks speaking the real hardcore dialects are poor, older or working class and do not have the means to take trans-Atlantic trips? You want to know why I watch Oprah? It’s about the only show I watch on US TV. Oprah is the essence of modern-day America, right? Of course it is. Update: A commenter says that neither parent has a Leicestershire accent. The father has a Scottish English accent and the mother has a bit of a Scouse accent. That makes sense then. I can understand most British accents, but Scouse, Scottish English and Geordie just kill me. And forget Scots. That’s a foreign language.

More Tireseome Stuff About Languages Versus Dialects

A commenter, who speaks Chinese and English and who apparently insists that all Chinese can understand each other notes:

I am a native English speaker who grew up in America, and a lot of varieties of English must be classified as separate languages by your standards. If you can understand 9

And tongues that require slow, repetitive speech into the ears of the average American in order to achieve 9

I would say that a lot of dialects are actually entities that are in-between language and accent/dialect. To this goes the relationship between Jamaican English and Californian English, for example, as well as SW Mandarin and NE Mandarin, and Portuguese as it relates to Castilian and Italian.

The whole notion of comparing the extremely divergent Chinese and German dialects to the dialects of English is utterly insane. As the Chinese and Germans say, we don’t have dialects in the US, we have accents. People from these places are amazed at how Americans sound so much alike. Commenter Lafayette Sennacherib has also noted that the dialects of Scots and even the rest of the UK are dramatically more divergent that what is found in the US. LS says that everyone in the US seems to sound the same, whereas in Scotland, you go 10-20 miles down the road, and you seem to encounter a whole new language. This is a common perception with the speakers in the gigantic dialect chains that stretch across Germany, China and other places. There is a group of speakers, typically extreme nationalists, who tend to insist that divergent dialects are not separate languages, but that they are only “dialects.” They usually add that “everyone can understand everyone.” There is also a typical and profoundly tiresome analogy that is constantly made comparing the extremely divergent Chinese, German, Italian and British dialects to New England, Midwest, Southern, New York, Texan and Californian dialects of US English. This is truly ridiculous. The dialects of US English are extremely close compared to the wildly diverse dialects of Chinese, German, Italian and even Scotland. I would even hare to add British English. One thing that we need to note is that with the Chinese, Italian and German dialects, there are often profound differences in syntax, morphology and what we call grammar. German dialects have incredible differences in vocabulary, and in many cases, the majority or possibly near all of the vocabulary is replaced from dialect to dialect. This is a strong clue that we are dealing with true dialects (often really separate languages) and not just “accents”. With accents, only the phonology, intonation and stress differs. Grammar and vocabulary is generally preserved. In Chinese dialects, not only are the phones and stress patterns different in addition to all the rest, but the all-important tones differ too, often wildly. It’s true that there are a few dialects in the US that are hard to hear. But Americans are understood all across the US by almost all other Americans. No American has problems with Texan, Midwest, New England, broad New York or Californian dialects – I have never met one in my life. The very idea is absurd and bizarre. I live in California in a major tourist spot. We get people from all over the world here, and from all over the US. I have never in my entire life met one single American native speaker of US English who I had a hard time understanding in face to face speech. I never had to ask one American to slow down, repeat stuff, or whatever. It doesn’t happen! There are some odd cases. A guy from Queens came out to town for a while recently and no one could understand his strong Queens accent. And he could not adjust it either, which is a strong clue that we are dealing with a language and not a dialect. After 3 months or so, he learned to talk like we Californians do and everyone understood him. In the intervening 3 months, almost no one was yet able to comprehend his dialect, even those who were hearing it almost every day. This is another clue we are dealing with a language and not a dialect. People can’t figure it out after months of exposure. It’s true that I can’t understand some Blacks speaking hardcore AAVE or Black English. There is a big movement to have this declared a separate language, and I would support that. I would also support making the very strong New York accent (“Queens” to us) a separate language, but it seems to be dying out anyway. Almost everyone else we Americans can understand. Louisiana Cajun English is very weird and maybe deserves separate status. Southern US English accents are generally intelligible if difficult; the Southern tourists you actually meet in the West are completely understandable. Appalachian English is kind of hard too, but the ones we meet out here in real life are fine. Oklahoma English is kind of strange. I heard people speaking hardcore Oklahoman at a doctor’s office recently and for a minute, I thought it was a foreign language like Russian. After a minute, I figured out it was Oklahoman and then I understood it all. One minute incomprehension does not a language make. I understand that a recent documentary on US TV showing poor older Blacks from the Mississippi Delta needed English subtitles in order to be understandable. We Americans can understand almost all Canadian English. However, a friend of mine has heard “Newfoundland fisherman’s dialect”, which was a dialect of Newfoundland Canadian English spoken by a fisherman on the coast of Newfoundland. She said she heard a few minutes of it and could not understand even a single word. I’m a strong supporter of making some of the British accents separate languages. We can start with Geordie, Northumbrian and Scouse (Liverpool), the most outrageous of them all, and move on from there. Carlisle Cumbrian is also very strange and is probably hard to understand. One native English speaker spent five years living in Liverpool and still could not understand Scouse, especially when spoken by women. Northumbrian is not even intelligible to speakers from southern England. Geordie is unintelligible to anyone outside of the UK. Geordie and Northumbrian are close to the Lallands dialect of the Scots language. There are quite a few folks advocating for Geordie to be called a separate language. It is important to recognize that we have lots of Brits coming here to the US to visit this tourist trap near me and lots of them living here too. They come from all over the UK on vacation and never once have I met one that I had a hard time understanding. The really hardcore British English accents must be poor people, rural people, or marginal to working class people who don’t travel much. Once you have the money to get on a plane and come to the US, your British English is probably intelligible to all of us. New Zealand English and Australian English is intelligible here in the US. These people come here a lot and we can understand them just fine. Whether there are hardcore accents that we can’t hear, I don’t know, but the visitors are no problem. Irish English (Hiberno-English) is kind of a tough one. I can understand Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, and that’s about as hardcore as it gets. Scots is already a separate language. Glaswegian often cannot be understood in Glasgow itself by those who were not brought up speaking it. I’m an advocate of making Scottish English a separate language too. Scottish English is not even intelligible in Southern England; it is not understood even in the south of England without quite a bit of adjustment. This is without any Scots mixture. Scots cannot be understood at all down there. So why don’t we create new languages out of (hardcore) New York dialect, Newfoundland fisherman’s dialect, AAVE, Geordie, Scottish English, Northumbrian and Scouse? Probably politics. Much of the English-speaking world has gone insane with outrage after we linguists decided Scots was a separate language. Can you imagine the outcry from your average Moronican, the outraged editorials from the nattering nabobs, the flood of insults from the boobeoisie directed at us linguists, and probably calls from Boobus Americanus to cut off our funding if we call hardcore New York dialect and/or AAVE a separate language? Who wants to receive that abuse? Jamaican English is a creole and it’s already recognized as a separate language, as are all of the other Caribbean creoles. Portuguese and Spanish have 50-6 Intelligibility testing with SW Mandarin and the rest of Mandarin would be interesting. I bet intelligibility comes out very low, maybe as low as 2 As SIL is clear that Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Scots and Jamaican Creole are all separate languages, the argument that they are “just dialects” holds no scientific merit. SIL is the last word on the subject from Linguistic Science (yes, we are scientists) as they give out ISO codes, and the debate ends with them.

A Reworking of German Language Classification Part 3: Upper German

Updated May 10, 2017. This post will be regularly updated for some time. Warning! This essay is very long; it runs to 101 pages. This is Part 3 of my reclassification of the German language. Part 3 deals with Upper German. Part 2, dealing with Middle German, is here, and Part 1, dealing with Low German, is here. This classification splits Upper German from 10 languages into 81 languages using the criterion of >9 There is much confusion about the phrase High German or Upper German. Standard German is referred to as Hochdeutsch, or High German, and many think that that means that Standard German is a High German or Upper German language. In fact, it is a Middle German language. However, there is a conflation of Middle German and High or Upper German in which both are subsumed under the mantle of High German. In reality, though, Middle German and High or Upper German are quite different. The Upper German lects are in pretty good shape. They are located in Southern Germany, and most are doing extremely well. The Upper German Franconian lects are doing fine. The Bavarian lects are going strong. Swabisch and Badisch are doing great. Low Alemannic in southern Germany is doing fine. Bavarian is the standard language of communication in Austria, and Swiss German is the standard language of communication in Switzerland. Only Alsatian, spoken in France, is somewhat in trouble due to France’s one-language policy. It is uncertain why Standard German has been unable to take out Upper German languages well, but Southern Germany has always been isolated from the rest due to mountainous terrain and an independent spirit. Bavarian and Swiss German are guaranteed as official languages of nations and are in no danger. A few small Upper German languages in Italy are in trouble, but that is mostly due to their being linguistic islands in a sea of Italian. Upper German Hutterite is doing very well. This treatment breaks Upper German from Ethnologue’s 10 languages into 82 separate languages.

The Alemannic languages, including Swabish and South Franconian.
The Alemannic languages, including Swabish and South Franconian.
Sudfrankisch (South Franconian) is an Upper German language transitional between Central and Upper German. It is spoken in northwest and north-central Baden-Württemberg around Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Pforzheim and Rastatt. It has a low number of speakers, and some do not even consider this lect to be a separate entity, so its treatment here is tentative. The very existence of this language is controversial. For instance, although Karlsruhe and Heidelberg are said to be South Franconian-speaking, in other analyses, the language is “Kurpfalzisch”. This language, or at least the variety spoken in Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, is very hard for Standard German speakers to understand. Dialects include Bad Schönborn, spoken around the city of the same name, Odenwäldisch, Kraichgauisch, spoken around the cities of Kraichgau and Santkanna, Unterländisch, spoken in and around Heilbronn, Central North Badisch (Zentral Nordbadisch), and Southern North Badisch (Süd Nordbadisch). Intelligibility is apparently good between all dialects (Costin 2015)
The Swabish speaking area in Germany
The Swabish speaking area in Germany.
Schwabian is a Alemannic lect that has about 4 The southern border of the Swabian language is Villingen-Schwenningen. After that, it follows the Danube to the east. In the east, the border is a line from Augsburg south to the Aargau. Reutte/Außerfern, a dialect in upper East Tirol on the Lech River just south of the Bavarian border, is considered to be Swabian. Stuttgart is in the Schwabian speaking area and the standard version of Swabian is spoken in Stuttgart. It has 820,000 speakers. Swabian has great dialectal diversity, and there is more than one language in Swabian. Badisch and Swabian form a dialect chain in which the dialects at the far ends of the chain are not intelligible with each other. The Western Swabian dialects are most comprehensible with the eastern Badisch dialects. Swabian is not intelligible with Alsatian, Swiss German or Bavarian. In fact, the differences between Swabian and Swiss German are tremendous. This is important to note because there are claims that the two are mutually intelligible. Swabian has many lects. Some of the major Würtingen Lower Swabian is a divergent Upper Swabian dialect spoken in Würtingen, 35 miles south of Stuttgart. It is not intelligible with the Upper Swabian spoken just six miles away and may not be intelligible with the rest of Lower Swabian. Investigation is needed to determine if Würtingen is intelligible with the rest of Lower Swabian. The dialects of Würtingen and Dettingen 35 miles south of Stuttgart are so different as to represent separate languages, Würtingen Lower Swabian and Dettingen Upper Swabian, yet they are only 6 miles away from each other. Dettingen seems to be a Upper Swabian dialect, and Würtingen seems to be an Lower Swabian dialect. This is in the area around Reutlingen, where there are several distinct dialects of Swabian spoken. Upper Swabian is language a spoken in the Upper Swabia in the Swabian  Mountains (Swabian Alps) in Baden-Württemberg. Tuttlingen is a main city in this area. Upper Swabia is the region from the Swabian Alps south to the Danube. At least the type spoken in Albstadt seems to be unintelligible with the rest of Swabian, in particular with the Swabian spoken in Tuttlingen and Esslingen. Even in and around Albstadt, there are villages only three miles away that speak completely separate languages of Alpine Swabian that are not intelligible with each other, so clearly there are multiple languages within Upper Swabian. Dettingen Upper Swabian is spoken in and around Dettingen, 35 miles south of Stuttgart. It is not intelligible with the Lower Swabian spoken in Würtingen nearby. Bavarian Swabian (Bayerisch Schwaben or Rieser Schwäbisch) is a major division of this language that is spoken in the Donau Reis, a region of Bavaria. It can be seen on the map as the Swabish speaking area of Bavaria north of the Danube. This is the form of Upper Swabian spoken in the Schwaben region of southwest Bavaria. According to residents, it is not intelligible with either Bavarian or with the rest of Swabian spoken in Baden-Württemberg (Kirmaier 2009), hence it is a separate language. Dialects include Augsburg and Lechhausen. Lechhausen is quite different. Other towns in the area include Brenz, Iller, and Lech. The town of Lech is said to be the border between Bavarian Swabian and Bavarian. East Swabian is spoken in the Eastern Swabish Alps. It is also spoken in Russian German Swabish is one of the divergent Swabish dialect spoken by Russian Germans in their widespread colonies. In general, it is not understood by anyone in Germany. There are only a few elderly speakers left. Whether or not it is intelligible with specific Swabish lects is not known. This is an old Swabish from around 200 years ago. Low Alemannic is a group of Alemmanic Upper German lects that are spoken in southern Baden-Württemberg, across the border into France, a bit into Switzerland, and over into southwestern Bavaria.
A chart of the Alemannic languages in 1950 based on the work of Karl Bohnenberger in 1953. Bodensee and Upper Rhine Alemannic were added based on Hugo Steger's 1983 work
A chart of the Alemannic languages in 1950 based on the work of Karl Bohnenberger in 1953. Bodensee and Upper Rhine Alemannic were added based on Hugo Steger’s 1983 work.
Upper Rhine Alemannic (Oberrhiinalemannisch) is a Low Alemannic superfamily division based on the work of linguist Karl Bohnenberger. This group includes Alsatian, Badisch, Upper Rhine Alemannic proper, and Basel German. South Badisch is a group of dialects, apparently a separate language, spoken along the French border of Germany and east a ways to the border with Swabian starting near Freiburg im Breisgau and heading up towards Karlsruhe, where it borders South Franconian. The differences between South Badisch and South Alemannic spoken just to the South are considerable, and the two are probably separate languages. Dialects include Ortenau (Ortenauer), Gottenheim, Freiburg-Opfingen, Elz, Kuppenheim, Iffezheim, Zell am Harmersbach, Kämpflbach, Breisgau (Breisgauer), Middle Kinzig River, and Black Forest (Schwarzwälder). Elz, a subdialect of Black Forest, is spoken around the city of Waldkirch in the Elz Valley. Gottenheim is spoken 6 miles northwest of Freiburg. Freiburg-Opfingen is spoken in and around the city of Freiburg and is composed to two dialects, Freiburg and Opfingen. Zell am Harmersbach is a dialect of Middle Kinzig River. Badisch forms a dialect chain with Swabian in which the far ends of the chain are not intelligible. The eastern dialects of Badisch are intelligible with the western dialects of Swabian. Intelligibility data between this and Alsatian is needed. Badisch is not at all intelligible with Standard German. Alemán Coloniero (Colonia Tovar) is a Low Alemannic language spoken in Venezuela. It is not intelligible with Standard German. It is originally derived from a Badisch-type lect. Baar Alemannic (Baar Alemannisch) is a Low Alemannic dialect. It is spoken in a region called the Baar in the upper headwaters of the Danube River in far southern Baden-Württemberg. Towns in this region include Löffingen, Tuttlingen, Bad Dürrheim, St. Georgen, Furtwangen, Villingen-Schwenningen, Rottweil, Trossingen, Hüfingen, Spaichingen, Geisingen, and Donaueschingen. Intelligibility data between this lect, Basel German, South Badisch and Upper Rhine Alemannic and is needed. Rottweil is a dialect spoken in the town of the same name.
Click to enlarge. A map of the languages of Alsace. Alsatian proper is in shades of green. Purples is Rhenish Franconian and light blue is Pfalzisch. Orange and pink are langues d’oil – orange is Welche, and pink is Franche-Compte. As you can see, more languages than just Alsatian are spoken in the Alsace.
Alsatian is a Low Alemannic language spoken in Alsace, France around Strasbourg, and is not intelligible with Standard German, Swabian, Swiss German or Bavarian. In Alsace, it is mostly spoken in the Sundgau region of south Alsace and in the rural areas of the center. It is an Upper German language related to Schwabian, Swiss German and Walliser. It has 700,000 speakers. The language is still widely spoken despite the fact that it gets little to no support from the French state. 20 years ago, not the same language as what they speak (Auer 2005). Furthermore, Alsatian is not intelligible with the Upper Rhine Alemannic spoken over the border. The reason is that Alsace has been cut off from the culture of Germany and Switzerland for so long that it has retained many archaic forms that went out to the east. At the same time, a huge amount of French has gone into Alsatian that has not gone into the languages to the east. Alsatian is actually a number of dialects, not all of which are completely mutually intelligible, although this is somewhat controversial. The language changes from village to village, and it is common for Alsatians to not understand each other. This implies that Alsatian is actually more than one language, but we don’t have enough data yet about intelligibility between varieties to split any of them yet. However, the Strasbourg variety has been promoted as the standard and is used on the local TV station (Osorio 2001).
Another map of the languages of the Alsace.
Lake Constance Alemannic (Bodeseealemannisch) is a super split in the Low Alemannic languages according to linguist Karl Bohnenberger. It includes Allgäuisch, Vorarlbergerisch, and South Württembergish (Süd Württembergisch), all separate languages. It has a strong French influence. It has 5 This language family is spoken in Vaduz, Lichtenstein; Bregenz, Austria, and Ravensburg and Tuttlingnen in Baden-Württemberg. In Tuttlingnen, it borders on Swabish. different Allgäuisch subdialects in each of the four major valleys in the region. One of the dialects is Bernbueren, spoken near Schongau and Weilheim. Other Opfenbach West Allgäuisch is a West Allgauisch dialect. It is spoken at least in and around the town of Opfenbach in far southwestern Bavaria between Wangen and Lindenberg. Vorarlbergerisch Vorarlbergerisch is a group of Low Alemannic languages that is part of the Low Alemannic Lake Constance Alemannic Family. It is similar to Swiss German. Vorarlbergerisch was originally a Swabian language. For the most part, the Vorarlbergers came from Valais in Switzerland in the 1200’s and 1300’s. This language is spoken in Austria and is not intelligible with Bavarian, Standard German or other German languages. It is spoken in Vorarlberg, a region in far western Austria near the Swiss border. This is a very different form of Eastern Upper Alemannic Swiss German that is still widely spoken in the area of Vorarlberg. Most reports on the lect indicate that it seems to be a separate language, unintelligible with all other German, Swiss German and Austrian lects other than West Allgauish and Appenzell Swiss German. Most towns in Vorarlberg have their own dialects. It has elements of Swiss German along with Tyrolean and Bavarian. Vorarlbergerisch is so different that speakers are given subtitles when they speak on Austrian TV. Many Vorarlbergerisch speakers either cannot or do not speak Standard German. There are three main divisions of Vorarlberg – Montafon, Lustenauerisch and Bregenzwalderisch. Feldkirch, Lustenauerisch, and Dornbin are listed as dialects, but Lustenauerisch is so different that it is a separate language. Most Vorarlbergers have some difficulty understanding Lustenauerisch, Muntafunerisch and Wälderisch. South Württembergish (Süd Württembergisch) is a major division of Lake Constance Alemannic. It is spoken east of Tuttlingnen and the Baar along the Upper Danube, south to the Swiss border and over to the border with Bavaria. This language has a heavy French flavor. South Wurttembergish has good intelligibility of Vorarlbergerisch (Scheffknecht 2015) and is best seen as a form of that language. Überlingen, Radolfzell, and Konstanz are dialects. Konstanz is spoken in the city of Konstanz on Lake Constance straddling the Swiss border. It is very different from the Thurgau Swiss German spoken across the border in Kruezlingen (Auer 2005). Lustenauerisch is so different that it itself is a separate language. Most people in Vorarlberg say that they cannot completely understand Lustenauerisch when it is spoken. That is because for many vocabulary items, the words are completely different. In addition, vowels also differ (Scheffknecht 2015). Bregenz Forest Vorarlbergerisch (Bregenzwalderisch or Wälderisch) is a very distinct form of Vorarlbergerisch spoken in the Bregenz Forest (Bregenzerwald) in far northwest Vorarlberg on the borders of Switzerland and Germany. Other Vorarlbergerisch speakers from elsewhere in Vorarlberg have some difficulty understanding Bregenzerwald speakers, so it may be a separate language (Scheffknecht 2015). This area is very famous for its dairy products, especially its cheeses. Lustenauerisch speakers say this is a different language from both Vorarlbergerisch and Lustenauerisch. There are two main dialects of this language – Vorderwald and Hinterwald – and they are quite different. Nearly every village has its own dialect. Intelligibility between dialects is not known. Egg is a dialect of this language. Appenzell Swiss German (Appenzellerisch) is an Eastern Upper Alemannic Swiss German lect that, while not intelligible with other forms of Swiss German, is actually intelligible with Vorarlbergerisch (Scheffknecht 2015) and is best seen as a form of that language. It is spoken in Appenzell Canton in Switzerland near the border with Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein. Appenzell Innerhoden and St. Gallen (Sankt Gallener or St. Galler Deutsch) are dialects of this language. High Alemannic is a group of lects that are spoken primarily in Switzerland. However, a few are also spoken in Baden-Württemberg right on the border with Switzerland. The most famous High Alemannic language is Swiss German. Central Bavarian has 5 South Alemmanic is a group of High Alemannic dialects, apparently a separate language, spoken in far southwestern Baden-Württemberg in regions called Markgräflerland and Hotzenwäld. Markgräflerland goes from about Basel to about Bad Krozingen in the north and to the Black Forest in the east. Hotzenwäld is a region around the Swiss border from Wehr to Waldshut-Tiengen, otherwise known as the Waldshut District. The differences between South Alemannic and Banish are considerable, and the two are probably separate languages. Klettgau is a South Alemannic dialect spoken on the Swiss border in the Waldshut District. Other dialects include Markgräflerland (Markgräflerisch), Hotzenwäld (Hotzenwälderisch), Rheinfelden, and High Rhine Alemannic (Hochrhein Alemannisch). Intelligibility between this and Swiss German in Switzerland and South Sundgau in Germany is not known, although it is probably not fully intelligible with Swiss German. Within Markgräflerland, there are subdialects such as Lörrach, Grenzach-Wyhlen, and Weil am Rhein. South Sundgau (Süd Sundgauisch) is a High Alemannic dialect spoken in southern Baden down around the Swiss border. Intelligibility between this and Swiss German is not known, but it is said that once you leave Switzerland and cross the border, people are no longer speaking anything close to Swiss German. Standard Swiss German (Schwyzerdütsch) is a High Alemannic language that is from 2 The city of Vaduz, Austria, also speaks Swiss German. There are 20-70 different lects within Swiss German, and according to Ethnologue, many of them are not mutually intelligible. Swiss German is so diverse that speakers are given subtitles when they speak on Austrian and German TV. The dialectal situation of Swiss German is very complex. About 30-40 years ago, before people started moving around a lot, there were many full Swiss German languages that were not intelligible to other speakers. We can call these the pure dialects. However, the situation has changed a lot since then. A form of Swiss German, call it Standard Swiss German, is now used across Switzerland when communicating with people who speak another form of the language. Many of the dialects seem to be changing from full languages into mutually intelligible forms of Standard Swiss German with regional dialects, similar to the situation in the US with our mutually intelligible regional dialects. When people are interviewed on Swiss TV, they typically speak in this standard language to make sure that they are understood. There are some elderly people who can speak only their regional form of Swiss German and not the standard version, and sometimes they cannot communicate with people in a similar situation speaking another version of the language. However, if you recorded speakers of many of the various forms of Swiss German speaking among themselves and then presented it to speakers of other forms of the language, you would probably need subtitles for them to understand it. In terms of lexicon, the Swiss German lects differ dramatically. There may be 40 different words for the same term in 40 different lects. Many Swiss German speakers dislike speaking Hochdeutsch, only speak it if they have to, and may refuse to speak it unless it is mandatory. Hochdeutsch classes are now mandatory in the schools, but most Swiss hate to study the language, and this requirement is resented by many Swiss. Some can understand the Hochdeutsch spoken on TV but may not understand the Hochdeutsch of a visitor. Some older Swiss cannot understand Hochdeutsch at all. However, most even elderly Swiss can speak some form of Hochdeutsch (Chervet 2016). Although Swiss German is considered to be a Upper German language, it has Low, High and Highest Alemannic forms inside of it. Hence, “Swiss German” is something of a trashcan description for forms of German spoken in Switzerland. The Pündner dialect is unclassified. Basel German (Baseldeutsch, Baslerdütsch, Baslerdietsch, Baseldütsch) is a type of Low Alemannic Swiss German spoken in and around Basel, Switzerland, that is not intelligible with High Alemannic Swiss German. However, the watered-down lect spoken in the city of Basel itself nowadays is indeed intelligible with Swiss German Proper (Chervet 2016). It is spoken across the border a bit into France west of Basel and north and northeast of Basel up into Baden-Württemberg to Freiburg. There are different dialects spoken in Baselstadt (a canton encompassing the city of Basel) and Baselland (Basel Canton), but it is not known how much they differ. Intelligibility between Basel German and South Alemmanic spoken to the north is not known, but it is said that when you cross from Germany to Switzerland in this region, people are no longer speaking the same language. Bernese Swiss German (Bärndütsch, Bäärndüütsch, Berndüütsche, Baernduetsch, Bern Deutsch) is is a Western High Alemannic Swiss German language that is not intelligible with Swiss German proper and is thus a separate language. Langenthal is a dialect of this language. Other Western High Alemannic Swiss German dialects include Solothurn (Solothurner, Solothurnerdütsch), Olten, West Aargau (Westaargauisch), Lower Frick Valley (Unterfricktal), Möhlin, Upper Frick Valley (Oberfricktal), Laufenburg, Central Aargau, Aargau, Middle Bernese (Mittelbernisch), Entlebuchisch, Lucerne (Lozärno, Lozärnerdütsch), and Zug (Zogerdütsch). The Frick Valley is located in northwest Aargau Canton. Möhlin is a subdialect of Lower Frick Valley and Laufenburg is a subdialect of Upper Frick Valley. Olten is a subdialect of Solothurn. Intelligibility data between the lects is not known. Ettiswil Bernese Swiss German is spoken in the town of Ettiswil in the canton Bern. It is so divergent that it may well be a separate language. Zurich Swiss German (Zuridootch, Züridüütsch, Zürcher, Züritüüstcht, Züritütsch, Züridütsch, Zöridütsch, Zuerideutsch or Zürischnüre) is not readily intelligible to speakers of Standard Swiss German. It is spoken in Zurich. As most Swiss hear this language a lot on TV, they are familiar with it and it is probably intelligible to most of them, but that does not mean it’s inherently mutually intelligible, because it’s not. Züridüütsch is a Central Swiss German dialect. Zurich Oberland and Goldbach are dialects of this language. Other Central Swiss German dialects include Stadtzürcherisch, Ämtler, See, Oberländer, Winterthurer and Unterländer. Schaffhausen (Neu Schaffhauserdeutsch, Schaffhuserisch), Zurich Weinland (Zürcher Weinländerdeutsch), Davos, Lower Toggenburg (Untertoggenburgerisch), Upper Toggenburg (Obertoggenburgerisch), and Rheintal (Rheintalerisch), Seeztal (Seeztalerdeutsch). Other dialects in the same group include Middle Lucerne/South Aargau (Mittelland Luzerndeutsch/Südaargauisch), Sursee, East Aargau (Ostaargauisch), Schaan, Balzers, Lucerne (Luzerndeutsch, Luzerner, Luzärnerisch, Luzärner), Bünd (Bündnerisch, Bündner, Bündnerdüütsh, Bündnerdütsh), Bad Ragaz, Chur (Churertütsch, Churer) and Graubünden (Graubündnerisch). Intelligibility data is lacking. Lucerne contains the following subdialects: Lucerne Hinterland (Hinterland Luzerndeutsch), Middle Lucerne (Lucerne Mittelland), Rigi, Sursee, Entlebuch and Lucerne/Hochdorf. Bad Ragaz is a subdialect of St. Gallen. Chur and Davos are subdialects of Graubünden. Schaan and Balzers are spoken in Lichtenstein. Thurgau Swiss German is an Eastern High Alemannic Swiss German language that is hard for many Swiss German speakers to understand. Dialects include West Thurgau (West Thurgauerisch), East Thurgau (Ost Thurgauerisch) and Upper Thurgau. Inner Swiss German is a group of Swiss German lects that are transitional between High Alemannic Swiss German and Highest Alemannic Swiss German. Intelligibility data is lacking. Dialects include West Oberland (Westoberländisch), Haslital (Haslitalerisch), Lungern, North Urn (Nord Urnerdeutsch), South Urn (Süd Urnerdeutsch), Obwalden (Obwaldnerisch), Nidwalden (Nidwaldnerisch), Engelberg (Engelbergisch) and West Obwalden (Westobwaldnerisch). Lungern is a dialect of Obwalden. Nidwalden Swiss German (Nidwaldnerisch) is an Inner Swiss German language that is not intelligible with other Swiss German lects, especially with Zurich Swiss German. Intelligibility with other Inner Swiss German lects is not known. Fribourg Swiss German (Fribourgerisch, Friburgerisch) is a Highest Alemannic Swiss German language that is not intelligible to other speakers of Swiss German and must be a separate language. It is spoken in Fribourg Canton southwest of Bern in southwest Switzerland. Intelligibility with other Highest Alemmanic Swiss German lects is not known. Jaun, Sensebezirk and St. Antoni are dialects of this language. Other Highest Alemannic Swiss German lects include Unterwalden and Glarus (Glarnerdeutsch, Glarner). Since Highest Alemannic languages seem to be hard for High Alemannic Swiss German speakers to understand, it is questionable to what degree the lects above are intelligible to High Alemannic. Intelligibility testing is in order. Bernese Oberland Swiss German is a Highest Alemmanic Swiss German language notorious for having poor intelligibility even with native speakers of Swiss German. It therefore qualifies as a separate language. Intelligibility with other Highest Alemmanic Swiss German lects is not known. Uri Swiss German (Ursnerisch)is a Highest Alemannnic Swiss German language has poor intelligibility with other Swiss German speakers, in particular with Zurich. It is spoken in Uri Canton. Intelligibility with other Highest Alemmanic Swiss German lects is not known. Attinghausen is a dialect. Schwyz Swiss German is a Highest Alemannnic Swiss German that is not intelligible to other Swiss German speakers, especially speakers of Zurich. It is spoken in the canton of Schwyz. Intelligibility with other Highest Alemmanic Swiss German lects is not known. Walser German is a Highest Alemannic language spoken in Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Lichtenstein and Germany. It is spoken by 22,780 speakers. It is not intelligible with any other Alemannic languages and is very different. This is very different from the Walliser language, which is a variety of Swiss German spoken in Wallis Canton. The Walsers split off from the Walliser group in about 1200 and moved to other areas. The Walsers moved into many areas of the Alps, often displacing or attempting to displace Romansch speakers. In many places, settlements failed, but they held in a few others. By the mid-1300’s, Black Plague ended the Walser migrations by devastating both the source and the destinations of the migrants. Most Walser dialects are very different even from one another, so there may be more than three languages in Walser. A process of assimilation is occurring in Switzerland whereby Walser speakers are assimilating to the German-speaking culture around them and in the process losing their language. Intelligibility between the widely variant dialects, other than Toitschu, is not known. The Walser are expert dairymen, woodworkers, weavers and mountain-climbers who often build a distinctive style house called a Walser house. Walser has many dialects. Triesenberg is spoken in Lichtenstein and has the support of the local government. Kleinwalsertal is spoken in Austria and has been on the decline lately. Rimella, Rima San-Giuseppe, Alagna Vallesia, Macugnaga and Formatta are dialects of Walser spoken in northwest Italy. The dictionary for Algana Walser has an incredible 22,000 words. Intelligibility data among dialects is not known. Gurin Walser German (Gurinerdeutsch) is a Walser dialect spoken in Bosco-Gurin, Ticino (Italian-speaking) Canton, Switzerland. It has remained isolated from other German varieties for centuries and may well be a separate language. This is close to the forms of Walser spoken in Italy. It must be unintelligible with other forms of Walser other than Italian Walser, and since Italian Walser is not even intelligible to the villages right next door, Gurin Walser must be a separate language. There are only 23 speakers of this language left in the village of Bosco-Gurin, and it seems to be dying out (PFECMR 2006). However, including speakers outside the town, there are 120 speakers. In addition, 40 people have receptive but not productive competence in the language (COE 2006). Toitschu Walser German is an outlying language related to Walser that is spoken in the village of Issime in the Upper Lys Valley in Valle d’Aosta in far northwest Italy. Toitschu is a highly divergent Walser lect that has been heavily influenced by Piedmontese and Francoprovencal. It is unintelligible with the rest of Walser and is a separate language. Both Toitschu and Titsch have 600 speakers and are both an endangered languages. Titsch Walser German is spoken in the same region as Toitschu in the Italian Alps of northwest Italy in the nearby villages of Gressoney-Saint-Jean and Gressoney-La-Trinité. There are currently major efforts underway to preserve both Toitschu and Titsch, but the regional Italian government does not seem very cooperative. Both languages are quickly giving way to Italian especially and both lack many words for modern things. Titsch is much different from Toitschu as it seems to have continued to evolve in time, while Toitschu seems to have been frozen back in 1200 or so. There is poor intelligibility between Toitschu and Titsch, and both must be separate languages. Major dictionary projects have just been completed and a large conference on both languages was held in the region recently which resulted in the publication of an amazing 163 page document exclusively about the Walser language. The dictionary of Titsch has an incredible 125,000 words, only Walliser German has about 250,000 speakers in the German part of Wallis (Valais) Canton, Central Switzerland. It is is a Highest Alemannic language. It is not intelligible with Standard German or with Walser. This is the more modern form of  older, archaic Walser German. There are six dialects: Gomer, Briger, Saaser, Zermatter (spoken in Zermatt), Lötschentaler and Raron. Simplon is a dialect of Gomer. There is currently a petition before SIL to have it recognized as a separate language. The petition states that all of the the dialects are mutually intelligible. Gomer differs in having a vowel shift to öi > ö. Briger is the most commonly spoken dialect. Zermatter has a different phonology and sounds melodic. Saaser is similar to Zermatter but not as melodic-sounding. It has a lot of unique vocabulary. Lötschentaler Walliser is the most archaic dialect, about halfway between the archaic Walser German and the modern Walliser German. It also has a lot of unique vocabulary. It is so different that other Walliser German speakers have a hard time understanding it (Chervet 2016). Therefore it makes sense to split it off into a separate language. Raron is characterized by a vowel shift ä > e. General Walliser Cäse > Raron Cese. The main city here is Brig. The language arose from immigrants from the Bern region who came to Wallis in the 700’s. Two different immigration waves led to two different Walliser dialect groups. In the 1100’s, a Walliser group split off and moved to other parts of the Alps. This group became the Walser German language speakers.
bairisches_mundartgebiet
Bavarian. North Bavarian is in yellow, Central Bavarian in pink, and Southern Bavarian is in blue.
Bavarian is a macro-language with three main varieties: Northern Bavarian, Central Bavarian and Southern Bavarian. There are claims that broad Bavarian is mutually intelligible across its length and breadth, but these claims seem somewhat dubious if not false in light of the 4 Also, there are claims that the diversity of dialects of Bavarian makes it impossible to create one unified dialect for writing Bavarian, as the debate over the Bavarian Wikipedia shows. Even Northern and Central Bavarian, supposedly mutually intelligible, are so different that to create one written form to unite them is impossible. For these reasons, intelligibility testing is imperative for Bavarian. Central Bavarian is described as extremely diverse. The various Vienna dialects have all died in the last 20 years, and Viennese now speak a Bavarian-Standard German mixed language based on an old East Viennese dialect mixed with Standard German and no longer speak pure Bavarian. The differences between Tyrolean Southern Bavarian, Carinthian Southern Bavarian, Styrian Southern Bavarian and Viennese are described as great. An attempt on the Internet to compare Bavarian with Texan English was described as ridiculous. All of this suggests that intelligibility inside of Bavarian is not all it is cracked up to be. Bavaria itself is very diverse linguistically, and the state is not synonymous with the language. In Southwestern Bavaria, Bavarian Swabian is spoken; the northern half of Bavaria speaks several Middle German Franconian lects (Bavarian is Upper German); and the far northwest of Bavaria speaks a Palatinian Rhine-Franconian language. Hence, less than 1/4 of Bavaria actually speaks Bavarian, adding up to about 1/3 of the population of the region. Each Bavarian-speaking village in Germany is said to have its own dialect. Bavarian is not intelligible with Swabian, Alsatian or Swiss German. A nice chart of the various Bavarian lects is here. Northern Bavarian or German Bavarian is spoken in Upper Palatinate, Bavaria. It is not intelligible with Central Bavarian (Kirmaier 2009).
Another map of the various Bavarian languages.
Oberpfälz North Bavarian (Oberpfälzerisch or Oberpfälzisch) is a language spoken in southeastern Germany in central eastern and northeastern Bavaria from Regensburg, Kelheim and the Bavarian Forest north along the Naab River to the Fichtelgebirge (Fir Mountains) and in the Northern Bohemian Forest along the border with Czechoslovakia. It is also spoken up by Neumarkt. According to residents (Kirmaier 2009), this is a separate language, not intelligible with other German Bavarian lects. Dialects of this language include Danube Oberpfälzisch, which, though different, is fully intelligible with the Oberpfälzisch spoken in Neumarkt. This is the Oberpfälzisch spoken along the Danube around the towns of Kelheim and Regensburg. Bohemian German (Boehmerwaelderischish) is a Upper German language spoken in Czechoslovakia, Germany and the US. It looks like Starting in the 1200’s, Germans began moving into the Sudetenland, often invited by Bohemian kings. Over the centuries, they pushed out the Czechs and Slavs living in the area and took it over for farming. Although intelligibility data for Bohemian German is lacking, it is often considered to be a full language of its own, so we will treat it as one in this analysis. Actually, since it ranges from East Middle German to Bavarian Upper German, Bohemian German seems to be a wastebasket designation for the varying lects spoken in the Sudetenland. On the border of Silesia, it resembled Silesian. On the border of the Erzgebirge, it looked like Erzgebirgisch. In the far northeast, where the Riesengebirge separated Bohemia from Silesia, in the Hultschiner Laendle, the people had a very divergent lect of their own. To the south of the city of Mies, along the Bohemian Mountains, it looked like Niederbayerisch. A dialect called Böhmish is spoken spoken in the Böhmerwald or Bohemian Forest. In the south, extending all the way towards Moravia, it looked very much like the Central Bavarian spoken in Austria. Sorting all of this out and determining what was a dialect and what was a separate language is going to be difficult. Schönhengst is a dialect of this language spoken in Moravia. Some Bohemian German speakers migrated to New Ulm, Minnesota. Quite a few others could be found in Bukovina, Romania. Egerland Bohemian German (Egerlaenderisch) is spoken in Bischofteinitz, Mies, Tachau and Taus Counties in the Czech Republic in Western Bohemia and in and around New Ulm, Minnesota, where there are still speakers ranging from 52-98 years old. In the Czech Republic, each village had a separate dialect, but all dialects are mutually intelligible. This appears to be a separate language from Oberpfalz Northern Bavarian. German speakers visiting New Ulm say that they cannot understand one word of this language. This seems to be the same language as Sechsämterland spoken across the border. The Sechsämterland dialect is spoken in the area around Selb, Wunsiedel, Hohenberg and Thierstein in the far northeast of Bavaria near the border with Czechoslovakia and Lower Saxony. Dialectal diversity is very high in this area, and every village has its own dialect. Lauterbach is a divergent dialect spoken east of Tirschenreuth on the Czech border. Tiss is a divergent subdialect of Egerland. Sangerberg is a divergent Egerlaenderisch dialect spoken in Prameny, Czechoslovakia. Eger is spoken in the large German city of the same name. Tachauer is a dialect that formed the basis for the Machliniec dialect spoken formerly spoken by the Carpathian Germans in their language island in the Machliniec area of the Ukraine. They left during WW2. German Central Bavarian is a group of Bavarian lects that are spoken in Germany. This group includes Lower Bavarian, Upper Bavarian and Lechrain Bavarian (Lechrainisch). It has 5 Lower Bavarian includes the Bohemian Forest language and many dialects. Upper Bavarian includes the Starnberg, Highland and Meisbach languages and many dialects. Lower Bavarian Central Bavarian (Niederbayerisch) is spoken in the Lower Bavarian region of German Bavaria. Major cities include Landshut. According to residents (Kirmaier 2009), this is a full language unintelligible with other German Bavarian lects. Speakers of Landshut Lower Bavarian Central Bavarian claim that Landshut is intelligible with Münchnerisch. On the other hand, some speakers of Münchnerisch find Regensburg Niederbayerisch almost impossible to understand. Dialects include Landshut, Regensburg, Passau, Straubing, Rottal-Inn, Breitenberg, Neureichenau, Thalberg, Germannsdorf, Untergriesbach, Wegscheid, Geiselhöring, Rattenberg and Landau. Rottal-Inn is spoken in the Rottal-Inn district east of Munich. Towns here include Eggenfelden, Pfarrkirchen and Simbach am Inn. Rottal-Inn is a fairly typical Central Bavarian dialect, nevertheless, the dialect of Simbach is different from the dialect spoken just across the border in Braunau. Breitenberg, Neureichenau, Thalberg, Germannsdorf, Untergriesbach and Wegscheid are spoken in far southeast Bavaria near the Austrian and Czech border and are very divergent. Geiselhöring is spoken in the Straubing-Bogen area of the Bavarian Forest. Rattenberg is also spoken in the Straubing-Bogen area and sounds like Viennese. Bohemian Forest Lower Bavarian is spoken in the far southern Bohemian Forest, at least along the Regen River and around the town of Zwiesel, where a dialect called Zwieslerisch is spoken. At least Zwieslerisch is not intelligible with the Niederbayerisch spoken around Straubing, which is only 60 miles away. This language is interesting because it has significant influence from Muhlviertel Lower Bavarian in Austria. Upper Bavarian Central Bavarian (Oberbayerisch) is spoken in the Upper Bavarian region of German Bavaria. The major city in this region is Munich. According to residents, it is a separate language not intelligible with the rest of German Central Bavarian (Kirmaier 2009). Upper Bavarian Central Bavarian is said to be intelligible across the border into Austria for some ways, but this notion needs clarification since it is said that if you go 15-20 miles in any direction outside of Munich, you are dealing with separate languages. Some say that people in Munich do not speak Bavarian anymore, but this does not seem to be the case. On the contrary, 2 However, the variety spoken in Munich (Münchnerisch) is a very watered-down type of Bavarian that is no longer the real deal. Nevertheless, speakers of Standard German often find it baffling. The pure Bavarian Münchnerisch seems to be dying in Munich with the massive influx of immigrants from all over Germany. Münchnerisch is still holding on very well in the boroughs of Sendling, Giesling, Obermenzing and parts of Neuhausen. The type of broad Central Bavarian spoken in Munich is widely understood in the urban centers from Munich to Vienna. There are at least 19 major Central Bavarian dialects, some of which are separate languages. Dialects include Oberschweinbach, Friedberg, Holledau and Bad Reichenhall. Holledau is spoken in a region north of Munich roughly bounded by Moosburg, Pfaffenhofen, Ingolstadt and Neustadt. This is the largest hops-growing region in the world. Oberschweinbach is spoken the Fürstenfeldbruck district west of Munich. Bad Reichenhall is spoken southeast of Munich on the border with Austria, near Salzburg. Friedberg, while located in Bavarian Swabia, speaks Bavarian, not Swabian. Starnberg Upper Bavarian is spoken in and around the city of Starnberg, 12 miles southwest of Munich. It has poor intelligibility with Munich Upper Bavarian. This language is mutually intelligible for some distance around it, but speakers cannot understand the Highland Upper Bavarian spoken 20 miles to the south (Anonymous July 2009). Highland Upper Bavarian is spoken along the German-Austrian border in Germany and Austria in the regions of Rosenheim, Meisbach and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany and across the border in the Karwendel Mountains in Austria. Rosenheim Upper Bavarian is spoken in the Rosenheim District south of Munich near the Austrian border, especially along the Mangfall River in the foothills of the Alps, the Chiegmau Mountains. Towns here include Rosenheim and Bad Aibling. It has very poor intelligibility with Münchnerisch. Intelligibility testing is needed between this language, Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Meisbach. Meisbach Upper Bavarian is a Bavarian language spoken in the Meisbach district of Bavaria in the towns of Meisbach, Finsterwald and possibly others. It is not intelligible with at least some other highland Bavarian lects (de Gyurky 2006). Intelligibility testing is needed between this and other highland Bavarian languages, especially Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Rosenheim, which are close by. Rosenheim is actually the next district over. Garmisch-Partenkirchen Upper Bavarian is a separate language that is spoken in Garmisch-Partenkirchen 50 miles southwest of Munich 6 miles from the Austrian border. This language is not intelligible at all with Münchnerisch. There are 2 dialects in this language – Garmisch and Partenkirchen. Intelligibility between the two is not known, and intelligibility between this language, Rosenheim and Meisbach is also unknown. This language is also spoken across the border in the Karwendel Mountains in Austria. This language is said to resemble the Tirol Bavarian spoken in Innsbruck, and may not even be a Central Bavarian language. Austrian Standard Central Bavarian is a koine language that is understood in most of Austria except for many in Vorarlberg who speak Vorarlbergerisch. It is based somewhat on the Vienna dialect, but it seems to have diverged quite a bit from the true pure Viennese. It is even understood in Tirol. This language differs dramatically from the Central Bavarian spoken across the border in Munich and in general is often not intelligible with it. There is a wide diversity of lects in Austrian Bavarian. It is not unusual for one lect to not be understood 50-80 miles away. In Austria as a whole, one source describes the dialects of the country as akin to dozens of different languages, which implies that there are more than 20 languages spoken here. Other sources say that there is a different dialect in each Austrian region, and none of them are intelligible with each other. Based on that, further investigation into Austrian Bavarian intelligibility is urgently needed. The lects are reasonably stable compared to the situation in Germany because most Austrians still grow up and live most of their lives in one area. Nevertheless, the situation is still poorly understood. Central Bavarian is not intelligible with the Southern Bavarian spoken in Tirol, Carinthia or Syria in Austria. Austrian Central Bavarian has two major divisions, Austrian Central Bavarian proper and Austrian Southern Central Bavarian. Southern Central Bavarian includes two main divisions – Styrian and West Southern Central Bavarian. Styrian includes West Styrian (Weststeirisch), Middle Styrian (Mittelsteirisch), Upper Styrian (Obersteirisch), East Styrian (Oststeirisch), Southeast Lower Austrian (Südostniederösterreichisch) and Burgenländ (Burgenländisch). West Southern Central Bavarian includes dialects such as Salzburg (Salzburgisch), Ausseerländ (Ausseerländisch), North Tirol (Nordtirolerisch) and Werdenfelsisch. Dialects include Innviertlerisch, Linz, Upper Pielachtal, Salzburgerisch , Wienerwald, Braunau, Bad Aussee, Bad Goisern, St. Johann in Tirol, Salzkammergut, Kufstein and many more. Viennese and Linz are very different. Innviertlerisch is spoken in the Innviertel Mountains in Upper Austria near the Bavarian border. Intelligibility testing is needed between this and Mühlviertlerisch. Upper Pielachtal is spoken along the Mariazellerbahn Railway from Mariazell to St. Polen in Lower Austria. Salzburgerisch is spoken in Salzburg. Wienerwald is spoken in the Vienna Forest west of Vienna. Bad Aussee is spoken in far northwest Styria near the border with Upper Austria. Bad Goisern is spoken in far southern Upper Austria near the borders with Salzburg and Styria. Braunau is spoken on the border with Bavaria. St. Johann in Tirol and Kufstein are actually spoken in Tirol – there are a few Central Bavarian lects spoken there. St. Johann is spoken in the Kitzbühel district in the far northeast of Tirol near the border with Salzburg. Kufstein is spoken in the Kufstein district in northeast Tirol near the Bavarian border. Central Bavarian is a dialect chain in which, while the lects of two adjoining cities are similar, the lects of major cities can differ dramatically. Speakers of Standard German sometimes say that they cannot a word of Viennese Central Bavarian. Thalgau Central Bavarian is spoken at the very least in and around the town of Thalgau east of Salzburg in Salzburg state. It is utterly unintelligible with other forms of Central Bavarian. Salzburg Central Bavarian (Salzburgerisch) is spoken in and around Salzburg, Austria. However, as of 30-35 years ago, it had poor intelligibility with Pongauer, Pinzgauer and Flachgauer. Hence, it may well be a separate language. The situation today is not known except that dialect use has dropped off alarmingly in Salzburg since then. Pongau Central Bavarian is spoken in the Pongau region south of Salzburg in Austria. Towns ion the area include Bad Hofgastein, Schwarzach, Werfen, Bad Gastein, Dorfgastein, Radstadt, Flachau, and Bischofshofen. 30-35 years ago, it had poor intelligibility with Pinzgauer, Salzburger and Flachgauer. Thus it may well be a separate language. Pongauer has Danube Bavarian influences. The situation today is unknown. Pinzgau Central Bavarian is spoken in the Pinzgau region southwest of Salzburg on the German border near the border with Tirol. The principal town in this region is Zell am See. Towns in the region include Bruck an der Großglocknerstraße, Dienten am Hochkönig, Ferleiten, Fusch an der Großglocknerstraße, Hollersbach im Pinzgau, Kaprun, Krimml, Lend, Lofer, Mittersill, Neukirchen am Großvenediger, Rauris, Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Saalfelden am Steinernen Meer, Taxenbach, Unken, and Uttendorf. Dialect use remains very high in this area. Pinzgauer is transitional between Central Bavarian and Southern Bavarian, but it is utterly unintelligible with Tyrolerisch. As of 30-35 years ago, it had poor intelligibility with Pongauer, Salzburger and Flachgauer. The situation today is not known. Flachgau Central Bavarian is spoken in the Flachgau region surrounding Salzburg. 30-35 years ago, it had poor intelligibility with Pinzgauer, Salzburger and Pongauer. The situation today is not known. Like Pongauer, it is similar to the Danube Bavarian spoken across the border to the west in Germany. Towns in the area include Neumarkt am Wallersee, Seekirchen am Wallersee, Mattsee, Anif, Fuschl am See, Sankt Gilgen, Lamprechtshausen, Oberndorf bei Salzburg and Straßwalchen. Lungau Central Bavarian is a lect spoken in the Lungau District in the southeast part of Salzburg state. It is quite different from surrounding lects. It is transitional between South Bavarian (Tyrolean, Styrian and Carinthian) and Central Bavarian (Salzburg, Upper Austria, Lower Austria. Carinthian influences are most prominent. It has 20,000 speakers. Use of this dialect has dropped off a lot in recent decades. Intelligibility data with surrounding Bavarian languages is not known, but considering that the other Salzburg district dialects have poor intelligibility with each other, and the uniqueness of Lungauer, Lungauer is probably a separate language. Mühlviertel Central Bavarian (Mühlviertlerisch) is spoken in the Muhlviertel, or Bohemian Forest, region of Austria where Austria, Czechoslovakia and Germany all come together. It has poor intelligibility with other types of Austrian Central Bavarian. This language is extremely variable, with each village having its own dialect, and the dialects even between villages often differing markedly. It does not appear to be readily intelligible with the Linz dialect spoken in the biggest city of Upper Austria either. Intelligibility is unknown between this language and Bohemian Forest Lower Bavarian spoken in the German part of the Bohemian Forest. Rural Upper Austrian Central Bavarian in general is unintelligible in both Vienna and Graz. Viennese Central Bavarian (Wienerisch) itself seems to be a separate language. The stronger form of the dialect spoken by low level workers, taxi drivers, etc. is hard to understand even for other Austrians speaking closely related lects. It is therefore reasonable to assume that this hard form of Wienerisch is a separate language. It is still alive in some suburbs such as Ottakring. Viennese has many unusual words that other forms of German lack. It has a comical quality that is sometimes imitated in parodies. Most Viennese now speak a Viennese German dialect that is readily understandable to any speaker of German. It is quite similar to the standard German spoken on news outlets. There are a few words that are different for body parts, expletives and food, but other than that, the vocabulary is the same as Hochdeutsch. The accent is less different than the difference between British and American English. However, Lower Austrian Central Bavarian is still spoken, mostly by older people, in the countryside outside Vienna. It is only about 5 Carpathian Central Bavarian was formerly spoken in Slovakia by scattered German colonies. They were ethnically cleansed after WW2, and most ended up in Germany. There still appear to be some speakers left, but they are probably elderly and the languages appear to be moribund. Dialects included Pressburg, Zipser and Hauerlaender. Pressburg was spoken near the city of Pressburg, and Zips and Hauerlaender were spoken near areas of the same names. Pressburg is a dialect of Viennese, but Zips and Hauerlaender are so diverse that they are not intelligible with any other forms of Bavarian. Zipser Carpathian Central Bavarian was spoken in an area of Slovakia called the Zips. Speakers were ethnically cleansed after WW2. Scattered elderly speakers probably remain, mostly in Germany. Not intelligible with any other forms of Bavarian (sample). Hauerlaender Carpathian Central Bavarian was spoken in and around an area called the Hauerland in Slovakia. Speakers were ethnically cleansed after WW2. Scattered elderly speakers probably remain, mostly in Germany. Not intelligible with any other forms of Bavarian (sample). Landers Central Bavarian is spoken by Transylvanian Saxons who lived in Transylvania in Romania. They were deported from the Salzkammergut region of Austria northeast of Salzburg in the 1730’s. They were ethnically cleansed after WW2, but then were allowed to return. The language is still spoken in Neppendorf, Großau, and Großpold in Romania and in Germany where many of the Landers fled to after the war. They originally spoke a Salzkammergut Central Bavarian lect, but over time, it changed so much that it must surely be a separate language, and that is the impression that Tapani Salminem, top expert on European languages, gives in a recent assessment. Southern Bavarian is spoken in Austria and in Alto Adige-Südtiro in Italy and includes the cities of Graz, Klagenfurt, Lienz and Innsbruck in Austria and Bozen and Moran in Italy. It is also spoken in the Samnaun region in Switzerland. Some of the Tyrolean lects in Austria, referred to here for convenience sake as Tyrolean Southern Bavarian (Tirolerisch), are so divergent that they are not intelligible with the rest of even Southern Bavarian; further, each valley has its own lect , and some are not intelligible even with each other. Hence, Austrian Tyrolean Southern Bavarian is a separate language. In Innsbruck, the main city in the Tyrolean Bavarian region, speakers have a hard time understanding many of the Tyrolean Bavarian lects spoken in many of the surrounding valleys. There are several main divisions in this language, including Tirol Highlands (Tiroler Oberländisch), Central Tirol (Zentral Tirolerisch), Tirol Lowlands (Tiroler Unterländisch) and East Tirol (Osttirolerisch). Smaller dialects include Innsbruck, Galtür, West Steeg, West Stuben, West Ischgl, West Lech, West Warth, West St. Anton/Tirol, Imst and Zillertal. Zillertal is spoken in the Zillertal Valley. Samnaun is an isolated dialect of this language spoken in the Samnaun region of the Lower Engadine Valley on the border of Austria and Switzerland. It is also spoken in the town of Samnaun in Switzerland, making it the only Bavarian lect spoken in that country. It is said to be very different from the rest of Southern Bavarian, possibly due to its heavy Romansch influence. The Samnaun area was Puter Romansch speaking all the way up into the 1800’s. Intelligibility between Samnaun and the rest of Austrian Tyrolean Bavarian is not known. Zillertal Tyrolean Southern Bavarian is not intelligible with Kitzbuhele spoken to the northwest, therefore, it is a separate language. Zillertal is transitional with Salzburg Central Bavarian to the east. Kitzbuhele Tyrolean Southern Bavarian has poor intelligibility with Zillertal, therefore, it is a separate language. Kitzbuhele has probably even more Salzburg Central Bavarian influence than Zillertal. Kitzbuhele is spoken in the Kitzbuhele Mountains on the eastern border of Tirol Province. Ötztal Tyrolean Southern Bavarian is one of the most ancient and divergent lects in Austrian Tyrolean Southern Bavarian. It has about 8-15,000 speakers. It was recently awarded a UNESCO cultural heritage award as a unique cultural heritage. There is no one Ötztal lect, but there are separate dialects in every little village, and they often vary dramatically. It is spoken in the Ötztal Valley in Austria is understood at least into the Upper Inn Valley in Austria and over the border in Italy to the Schnals region northwest of Merano. Ötztal appears to be secure for the next few generations anyway and is the common means of communication among people of all ages. Since Ötztal is not understood outside the region, it must be a separate language. Lower Inn Valley Tyrolean Southern Bavarian is not intelligible with Lechtal Tyrolean Southern Bavarian spoken just to the northwest. This language is spoken in the lower valley of the Inn River west of Innsbruck. Therefore, it is a separate language. Lechtal Tyrolean Southern Bavarian has poor intelligibility with Lower Inn Valley Tyrolean Southern Bavarian spoken just to the southeast. This language is spoken in the Lechtaler Mountains west of Innsbruck. Towns in the region include Steeg, Bach, Elbigenalp, Elmen, Stanzach, Weissbach and Reutte. This language is on the border between the Alemannic and Bavarian language groups, and it also has an Allgauish flavor. Pitztal Tyrolean Southern Bavarian is spoken in the Pitztal Mountains west of Innsbruck. Towns in this region include Arzl and St. Leonhard. Pitztal is very different from Ötztal Austrian Tyrolean Southern Bavarian and communication between the two lects is difficult. Therefore, Pitztal is a separate language. West Tyrolean Galtür was Swiss German speaking until 1900, and today its dialect is more Alemannic than other Tyrolean lects. The West Tyrolean areas of West Steeg, West Stuben, West Ischgl, West Lech, West Warth and West St. Anton/Tirol, all along the border of West Tyrol and Vorarlberg, were originally Highest Alemannic Walser settlements like Vorarlberg. All of West Tyrol was Swabian-Bavarian speaking until the Middle Ages. Onto this Swabian base came influence from the Walser and Swiss German villages described above, and all of this on top of an earlier Romansch base, as the whole region was also Romansch-speaking. All of these have receded, leaving only Tyrolean Bavarian, but these are the substantial inputs into Western Tyrolean Bavarian. Western Styrian or Western Styrian Southern Bavarian, (Steirisch) is said to be unintelligible outside of the region, and hence must be a separate language. Another lect spoken in Styria, this one in the southern part, is South Styrian. Intelligibility data is not available. Speakers of Central Austrian spoken on the Austrian flats cannot understand Carinthian Southern Bavarian (Kärntnerisch) either, so it looks like a separate language too. There are three principal dialects of Carinthian, Upper Carinthian (Oberkärntnerisch), Middle Carinthian (Mittelkärntnerisch) and Lower Carinthian (Unterkärntnerisch). Intelligibility data is lacking. Carinthian has heavy Slavic influence due to its proximity to Slovenia. There are also speakers of Carinthian Southern Bavarian in the Canale Valley/Val Canale area of Udine in Italy. This area used to be part of Austria but it changed hands after WW2 and most of the German speakers moved to Austria. Now about 8 Intelligibility testing is needed between Tyrolean Southern Bavarian and Carinthian Southern Bavarian. Gottschee Southern Bavarian (Göttscheabarisch or Gottscheerisch) is an outlying Bavarian language spoken by people called the Gottscheers in Kocevje, Slovenia. They apparently originally came to the region in the 1300’s from the Carinthian/Tyrolean border area. It is heavily influenced by the Slovene Carniolan dialects. It is closely related to the lects of other outlying German colonies in the area, including Zahre (Sauris in Italian), Tischelwang (Paluzza-Timau in Italian) and Pladen (Sappada in Italian) in Northern Italy. The Italian settlements were settled around 1420. Pladen/Sappada is in the eastern Upper Italian province of Belluno at the far end of the Piave Valley, to the south of the Carnic Alps. These people originally came from the East Tyrolean Pustertal Valley in Austria in the vicinity of Sillian-Heimfels near the towns of Villgraten, Tilliach, Kartitsch, Abfaltersbach and Maria Luggau. Pladen Southern Bavarian is spoken here by about 1,000 of the 1,500 residents, but many also speak Friulian (Maurer-Lausegger 2007). Southern Bavarian is spoken in Zahre and based on an old East Tyrolean language from the Lesach Valley, which they left in 1280. Zahre is very similar to Pladen, but has more influence from the Romance family, particularly Italian (Maurer-Lausegger 2007). However, Zahre has been isolated from Pladen for 700 years (Denison 1971). This time period is so long that the two lects are probably no longer mutually intelligible. Zahre is still very much alive and spoken in the town, but it is being displaced by Friulian among young adults and by Italian among children. The Zahre lect was pronounced nearly extinct in 1849 and again in 1897 by visitors. In Timau, Tischelwang Southern Bavarian is spoken in the But valley, on a tributary of the Tagliamento River on the southern slopes of the Plöcken Pass in the Carnic Alps in the province of Udine. This is actually a Carinthian lect that is probably not intelligible with the Pladen and Zahre lects, though intelligibility data is needed (Maurer-Lausegger 2007). Therefore, Tischelwang Southern Bavarian is in all probability a separate language. Pladen and Zahre are probably no longer intelligible with lects in Austria, considering they have been isolated from their Austrian parents for 700 years, hence they are probably separate languages. Pladen and Zahre have been isolated from each other for 700 years since the migration, hence they are probably two separate languages, Pladen Southern Bavarian and Zahre Southern Bavarian. Tischelwang has been heavily influenced by the Friulian language. Gottscheerisch has maintained many of the features of the Medieval Bavarian languages and it is said to be the oldest living Bavarian language. Speakers were ethnically cleansed after WW2, and now they are scattered about the world. There are about 3,000 native speakers left in the world, many of them living in Ridgewood, New York, where speakers still maintain the language. All remaining speakers are elderly. It does not appear to be intelligible with the rest of Bavarian or with other German languages and is therefore a separate language. In Italy, Italian Southern Bavarian encompasses three different lects that differ dramatically from one another. It is spoken in Belluno, Trento and Udine (Maurer-Lausegger 2007). The Fersina Valley/Valle del Fersina is in Eastern Upper Italy, to the north of Pergine (Persen) near the capital of Trento in the province of Trentino. There are many Bavarian speakers here. They originally came from various valleys in North and South Tyrol. They speak an old mixed Tyrolean vernacular from the 1200’s with a lot of unique developments. In addition, in the Fersina Valley, every village has its own subdialect. Fersina Valley Southern Bavarian is probably a separate language and is probably not intelligible with other Bavarian lects (Maurer-Lausegger 2007). In this area, everyone speaks Italian too. This variety of Bavarian has heavy Italian influence. There is also a South Tyrol Standard Southern Bavarian (Südtirolerisch) that is beginning to emerge in this part of Italy so the three dialects can talk to each other (Maurer-Lausegger 2007). Although intelligibility data between this koine and the rest of Southern Bavarian is not known, it does appear to be a separate language, as most koines are. One Tyrolean lect spoken in this area is called Eisacktalerisch. It is spoken in the Eisack Valley of South Tyrol and is about halfway between the Innsbruck dialect and the lect spoken in Bolzano. Intelligibility data is not known. Since the three dialects of Southern Bavarian in Italy cannot understand each other, we may as well split them off. Udine Southern Bavarian is spoken in the province of Udine in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. It is not intelligible with the varieties of Southern Bavarian spoken in Trentino or Belluno. Belluno Southern Bavarian is a Bavarian language spoken in the province of Belluno in the Veneto region of Italy. It is not intelligible with either Trento Southern Bavarian or Udine Southern Bavarian. One dialect of Belluno is called Puschterisch and is spoken in the area of Brunico only 15 miles south of East Tirol. Intelligibility with the rest of Belluno is not known. Trento Southern Bavarian is spoken in the province of Trento in the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol region of Italy. It is not intelligible with Belluno Southern Bavarian or Udine Southern Bavarian. Hianzen Southern Bavarian (Hianzisch) is spoken in southern Burgenland, Austria, along the Hungarian border, particularly around the town of Güssing. It seems to have poor intelligibility even with other nearby forms of Southern Bavarian. Cimbrian is a Bavarian macrolanguage spoken in northeastern Italy. It is not intelligible with Standard German or with other Bavarian languages. It has 2,230 speakers. Cimbrian is actually three separate languages. Lusernese (Lusern) Cimbrian is a separate Cimbrian language not intelligible with other types of Cimbrian. It is spoken in the province of Trento, Italy, where it has 500 speakers in Trentino Alto Adige 40 km southeast of the city of Trento. Tredici Communi (Dreizehn Gemeinden) Cimbrian (Tauch) is a separate Cimbrian language not intelligible with other types of Cimbrian. It has 230 speakers near Verona, Italy, where it is currently spoken only the village of Giazza-Ljetzan. Sette Comuni (Sieben Gemeinden) Cimbrian is a separate Cimbrian language not intelligible with other types of Cimbrian. It is spoken near Asiago, Italy, where it is currently spoken only the village of Roana-Robaan. It has 1,500 speakers. Hutterite German is a Bavarian language spoken in Canada and the US. Intelligibility: 7 Yiddish is a language spoken by European Jews that has heavy Hebrew influence on a Germanic background. It branched off from Medieval Middle German (mostly Rhenish languages) and was influenced by modern German in the 1800’s and 1900’s. It is not a dialect of German as commonly thought, but is instead a full language. It contains two languages, Western Yiddish and Eastern Yiddish. Eastern Yiddish is spoken in Israel by 215,000 speakers and by 3,142,560 Jewish speakers worldwide. It has poor intelligibility with Western Yiddish. Eastern Yiddish originated east of the Oder River through Poland, in an area moving into Belarus, Russia (to Smolensk), Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and Palestine before 1917 (in Jerusalem and Safed). There are three dialects: Southeastern, Mideastern and Northeastern. Dialects are apparently intelligible. Southeastern is spoken in Ukraine and Romania, Mideastern is spoken in Poland and Hungary and Northeastern is spoken in Lithuania and Belarus. Eastern Yiddish is not intelligible with Standard German or any other form of German. Linguist Paul Wexler argues that Eastern Yiddish is a version of West Yiddish creolized over a Kiev-Polessian Slavic lect. Hence, it is a Germano-Slavic creole. Western Yiddish is a language spoken in Germany by 49,210 Jewish speakers. There are also speakers in Belgium, France, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands and Switzerland. There are three dialects: Southwestern , Midwestern and Northwestern . Southwestern is spoken in southern Germany, Switzerland, and Alsace (France). Midwestern is spoken in central Germany and parts of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Northwestern is spoken in northern Germany and the Netherlands. West Yiddish has poor intelligibility with East Yiddish. Western Yiddish is not intelligible with Standard German or any other form of German. Linguist Paul Wexler has argued that Western Yiddish is a Germano-Sorbian creole. References
Anonymous A and B. Starnberg Upper Bavarian speakers. Oakhurst, California, USA. Personal communication. July 2009. Auer, Peter. The Construction Of Linguistic Borders And The Linguistic Construction Of Borders. 2005. In Filppula, Markku, Palander, Marjatta and Penttilä, Esa (eds.) Dialects Across Borders: Selected Papers From the 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI), Joensuu, August 2002. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 273. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Bindorffer, Györgyi. 2004. Hungarian Germans. Identity Questions: Past and Present. Ethnologia Balkanica 8:115-127. Chervet, Ben. Swiss German speaker, Bern, Switzerland. Personal communication. February 2016. Costin, Paul. Karlsruhe South Franconian native speaker. Personal communication. May 2015. Council of Europe (COE). May 26, 2006. Periodical Report Relating to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages Third Report – Switzerland. Strasbourg, Germany. de Gyurky, Szabolcs Michael. 2006. The Cognitive Dynamics of Computer Science: Cost-Effective Large Scale Software Development, p. 86. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-IEEE Computer Society, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Denison, Norman. 1971. Some Observations on Language Variety and Plurilingualism, chapter 7 in Ardener, Edwin. Social Anthropology and Language. London: Tavistock Publications.Jeep, John M., editor. 2001. Kirmaier, Andrea. Oberpfälzisch North Bavarian native speaker, Neumark, Germany. Personal communication. March 2009. Maurer-Lausegger, H. May 21, 2007 The Diversity of Languages in the Alpine-Adriatic Region I. Linguistic Minorities and Enclaves in Northern Italy. Tidsskrift for Sprogforskning, North America. Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia. New York and London: Garland. Minahan, James. 2002. Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations, Illustrated Edition, p. 42. Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing Group. Myhill, John. 2006. Mass Media Anthropology. Unpublished PhD thesis: Santiago: University of Chile. Public Foundation for European Comparative Minority Research (PFECMR). 2006. Walser German In Switzerland – Through the Lenses of the European Charter For Regional or Minority Languages. Council of Europe. Ross, Charles. 1989. contribution to support more of this valuable research.

A Reworking of German Language Classification Part 2: Middle German

Updated June 27, 2016. This post will be regularly updated for some time. Warning! This essay is very long; it runs to 79 pages. Part 2 post deals with the huge language family known as Middle German. Part 1 deals with Low German and Part 3 deals with High German. This classification splits Middle German from 15 languages into 43 languages using the criterion of >9 Middle German is easily the most famous German division of them all, and it is doing better than Low German or High German. That is because Standard German is a Middle German language. There is much confusion about this because Middle German and High German are often lumped in together as “High German” with Middle German being a branch of High German.  This is reflected in the term for Standard German “Hochdeutsch”, which means High German. Thuringian (Thüringisch) is group of East Middle German lects related to Upper Saxon spoken to the west of Berlinisch and Upper Saxon. The status of Thuringian is very confused. It’s often said to be easy to understand, but some of the individual dialects are quite hard for Standard German speakers to understand. However, at least people from Schleswig-Holstein cannot understand Thuringian, so it is not true that all Hochdeutsch speakers can understand this lect. Therefore, Thuringian is best seen a separate language. Thuringian has a sing-song quality and is one of the easier lects for Standard German speakers to understand. The southern linguistic boundary of Thuringian with East Franconian is formed by the ridge of the Thuringian forest. Thuringian has many dialects. not intelligible with Eastphalian, North Hessian or other types of Thuringian. Central Thuringian (Zentralthüringisch) is a dialect of Thuringian that is spoken in a triangle in central Germany formed by Arnstadt, Erfurt, and Gotha. Stiege North Thuringian is a North Thuringian dialect spoken in the town of Stiege in the Lower Harz Mountains in Saxony-Anhalt just north of the Thuringian border. This area is transitional between Low German and Middle German. The town of Hassenfelde four miles to the north was Eastphalian speaking, but Stiege is Thuringian. So Stieger is a Thuringian language with strong Eastphalian influence. A century ago, Stieger was Upper Saxon is an East Middle German language that is not mutually intelligible with Standard German. What’s odd is that Standard German was based on a specific Upper Saxon dialect as spoken in about 1700. It has since drifted into a language of its own. Intelligibility between Upper Saxon and Standard German is very poor, worse than intelligibility with Bavarian, and is probably less than 4 It is spoken in southeastern Germany, southwest of Berlin near Saxony, in Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz in Saxony and around Halle in Saxony-Anhalt. Some other Germans, especially from southern Germany, find Upper Saxon almost impossible to understand (Kirmaier 2009). Upper Saxon is considered by many Germans to be among the hardest dialects of all to understand, if speaking of dialects spoken in Germany proper. It has extensive Slavic borrowings. Since German reunification in 1990, Upper Saxon has been giving way to Standard German. It has 2-4 million speakers. Upper Saxon has nine different dialects within it. Standard German (Hochdeutsch) is an East Middle German language based on Upper Saxon, the pluricentric language of German, and the official and uniting language of all German speakers. Genetically, it is closest to Thuringian, Upper Saxon and Lower Silesian, but it has diverged dramatically. It was originally based on a certain Upper Saxon dialect, and there is a dialect of Upper Saxon today that still bears remarkable similarity to Standard German. The best version of Standard German spoken today (the one that “lacks an accent”) is said to be the speech of Hanover in central Lower Saxony. This is in the Eastphalian Low Saxon area, but Standard German has pretty much cleaned out the Low Saxon in the area and has almost completely replaced it. It is also known as Hochdeutsch. Most German dialect speakers also speak Standard German, but in a few places there are speakers of German type languages in and around Germany that cannot speak Hochdeutsch, notably in far western Austria, to some extent in Switzerland, and a few older people in Hessen. Further, the Dutch Low Saxon speakers in the Netherlands, treated as Macro-German speakers in this analysis, may not speak Standard German, though many Dutch have at least some understanding of German. It is possible that some of the South Meuse-Rhenish transitional lects may not speak German either. Standard German has been seriously impacting Low German since the 1700’s, but it has only effected other German languages recently. Like other pluricentric languages, Standard German serves the function of being a common language for many Macro-German speakers who would not ordinarily have one. Unserdeutsch is a German-based creole spoken in New Guinea by only about 100 remaining speakers, some of whom are middle aged. It originated based on the Standard German spoken in German colonial times. It was formed, oddly enough, by New Guinean children who were raised in an orphanage run by German speakers. It then came to be spoken by the White-New Guinean Catholic Vunapope community in the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain. It is one of only two German-based creoles. Belgranodeutsch is a German-Spanish creole spoken in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is a mixture between Spanish and Standard German and is no doubt not intelligible with Standard German. The Belgrano district is a part of Buenos Aires that has many German speakers. Namibian Black German (Küchendeutsch) is a German pidgin spoken in Namibia based on Standard German. It is presently nearly extinct. It used to be spoken by Namibian Blacks who were servants for their German colonial masters in the German colony of Sudwest Africa. It is probably not intelligible with Standard German. Berlinerisch is an East Middle German lect, and is one of the easiest German dialects to understand, however, some speakers of Standard German say it takes them several months to learn to understand it completely, so in that sense it may be a separate language. But those speakers were generally Americans who spoke German as a second language. It is said by Berliners that any German can understand Berlinerisch, but there are reports that Upper Saxon speakers have a hard time with Berlinerisch, so it appears to be a separate language. Ruhrdeutsch is an East Middle German language spoken in the Ruhr far away from the other East Middle German languages. It is a strange language which spoken around Essen in North Rhine-Westphalia. It has elements of Low Franconian Bergisch lects and Westphalian Low Saxon. It is quite distinct and is probably a separate language (sample). North Upper Saxon (Nordobersächsisch). This Upper Saxon dialect is spoken in the Elbe-Elster Region. Intelligibility data is needed between this and other forms of Upper Saxon. It is not well-known. closer to Upper Saxon. Gladitz at least has poor intelligibility even with Brandenburgish. Osterlandic (Osterländisch) is an Upper Saxon dialect that is spoken in Delitzsch and Torgau in far northwest Saxony, across the border into far southern Saxony-Anhalt in Wittenberg and Bitterfeld, and into far southeastern Brandenburg in Liebenwerda and Elsterwerda. Osterlandic is not intelligible with any Upper Saxon lects spoken in Saxony, nor with Erzgebirgish. This language is still doing very well. Dialects include Northeast Osterlandic (Nordost Osterländisch), Southwest Osterlandic (Südwest Osterländisch), Southeast Osterlandic (Südost Osterländisch) and Schraden Osterlandic (Schraden Osterländisch). Meissenish is a group of Upper Saxon lects spoken in Saxony. North Meissenish (Nordmeißenisch) is an Upper Saxon dialect spoken around the cities of Grimma, Döbeln and Riesa in northern Saxony east of Leipzig. It is little known, but there are still many speakers. This language is incredibly hard for Standard German speakers to understand. Northeast Meissenish (Nordostmeißenisch) is an Upper Saxon dialect spoken in a small area around Lommatzsch and Großenhain in Saxony northwest of Dresden. It is little known, but must still have many speakers. Intelligibility data is needed between this and other forms of Upper Saxon. West Meissenish (Westmeißenisch) is an Upper Saxon dialect spoken in Saxony on both sides of the lower Zwickauer Mulde River around Rochlitz, Mittweida, and Borna north and northwest of Chemnitz which forms an intermediate position between North Meissenish and South Meissenish on one side and a Thuringian dialect called Altenburg (Altenburgish) on the other side. It has Thuringian and Hessian characteristics. It is little known, but still has many speakers. Intelligibility data is needed between this and other forms of Upper Saxon. South Meissenish (Südmeißenisch) is an Upper Saxon dialect spoken in an area of Saxony around the cities of Öderan, Frankenberg, Hainichen, and Freiberg northeast of Chemnitz. It is poorly known, but still has quite a few speakers. Poor intelligibility with Southeast Meissenish. Southeast Meissenish (Südostmeißnisch) is an Upper Saxon language spoken in Saxony in a circle around Dresden around the cities of Dippoldswalde, Meißen, Radeburg, Pirna, and Bad Schandau. It was heavily influenced extensively by the old language spoken in Dresden. Many speakers remain, but it is poorly known. Southeast Meissenish is utterly unintelligible even with other East German lects such as the Havelländisch Markish spoken in Brandenburg west of Berlin. Southeast Meissenish speakers have a hard time understanding South Meissenish. Fore Vogtländisch (Vorvogtländisch) is an Upper Saxon lect that is transitional to East Franconian. It is little known. Lusatian (Lausitzisch) is an East Middle German language spoken in Eastern Germany. There is difficult intelligibility between this language and Standard German. It has some traces that go back to Dutch for some reason. There are various dialects of Lusatian. Dialects include West Lusatian, East Lusatian, New Lusatian, Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian. This language has very marginal intelligibility with Standard German, and intelligibility testing is indicated. West Lusatian (Westlausitzisch) is a lect spoken in eastern Saxony, east of the upper Pulsnitz River, west of the Lausitzian speakers in the Sorbian area and northwest of Dresden in an isolated region around Pulsnitz, Bichofswerda and Kamenz. This dialect is transitional between Upper Saxon and Upper Lusatian. This lect is little known, but it still has 50,000 speakers. New Lusatian (Neulausitzer) is spoken in Saxony in the Sorb-speaking area around Bautzen and Hoyerswerda. Upper Lusatian (Oberlausitzer) is a lect spoken in southeastern Saxony near Zittau by the border of Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. It is spoken in the village of Schönbach and other areas. This lect is still the primary means of communication in the region. Difficult intelligibility with Standard German (9 Lower Lusatian (Niederlausitzisch) is spoken around Cottbus, Finsterwalde, Senftenberg, and Spreewald in far southern Brandenburg and south across the border in Hoyerswerda, Weißwasser in far northern Saxony. Lower Lausitzian and Lower Silesian overlap geographically with High Prussian in central East Prussia and neighboring West Prussia. This dialect is transitional between Low German and Middle German. This dialect appears to be in good shape, has many speakers at least in Cottbus and has poor intelligibility with Standard German. Silesian* (Schlesisch) is a group of two East Middle German languages. As a separate language, Lower Silesian it is recognized by Ethnologue. It is spoken north of the Riesengebirge (Giants Mountains) around Glatz in eastern Bohemia, Czechoslovakia and in Kuhländchen in the upper Oder area. It was formerly spoken in Western Moravia. By the 1100’s, this region was covered with German settlements and was completely Germanophone. As a high-level German dialect grouping, it must be a separate language. Silesian dialects include Neiderländisch, Kräuter Silesian (Kräuterschlesisch), Mountain Silesian (Gebirgsschlesisch), Glätzisch, Brieg-Grottkau Silesian (Brieg-Grottkauer Schlesisch), Reichenberg, and Upper Silesian (Oberschlesisch). This language is often described as a sort of German Creole with heavy Polish elements in it. Lower Silesian (Niederschlesisch) is an East Middle German language spoken southeast of Berlin close to the Polish border near Bautzen and in Eastern Bohemia in Czechoslovakia. It was formerly spoken extensively in Poland. It is not mutually intelligible with Standard German. In some places, it is still spoken by young people. It still has quite a few speakers, possibly as many as 500,000. It overlaps with High Prussian in central East Prussia and West Prussia. Oppelner is a dialect of this language. Hultschiner Laendle Bohemian German is a Silesian dialect spoken in a pocket of the Sudetenland where Bohemia borders Silesia. This divergent lect is considered to be a separate lect from the rest of Bohemian German and is probably close to and may be a dialect of Lower Silesian. Poorly known, but there are probably still some speakers left. High Prussian (Hochpreußisch) is an East Middle German Silesian language that was formerly spoken extensively in East Prussia, now part of Poland. The language is moribund with the expulsion of Germans from Poland after WW2, and there are only a few elderly speakers left. It must surely be a separate language and must be unintelligible with other German languages or with Standard German. The language originated from Silesian speakers who moved to the area in the 1200’s-1400’s. It was then influenced by the extinct (since 1700’s) Baltic Low Prussian language, a West Baltic language related to Lithuanian and Latvian. All West Baltic tongues have gone extinct. Baltic Low Prussian went extinct around 1710 when a series of famines and bubonic plague epidemics swept through the population, decimating the speakers. Dialects of High Prussian include Oberländisch and Breslau (Breslausch). Barossa German is a moribund language spoken in Australia by a few remaining elderly speakers. Speakers came from the High Prussian and Silesian regions, so the language is a Middle East German tongue. It is very strange, barely intelligible at all to Standard German speakers and probably not intelligible with any other German lects either. German settlers arriving around 1840 settled in the Barossa Valley in South Australia. It declined with the suppression of Germans and the German language in Australia during WW1. Vilamovian (Wilamowicean or Wymysorys) is a West Germanic language spoken in Wilamowice (Wymysoj), Poland near Bielsko-Biała, on the border between the regions of Silesia and Lesser Poland. This is in the far southwestern part of Poland near Germany and Czechoslovakia. It is derived from the Middle German circa the 1200’s spoken by settlers who came to the area from Germany, Scotland and the Netherlands. Why they all decided to speak a German language is not known. Further, despite their disparate origins, they all decided on a Dutch identity, while speaking German nevertheless. Very confusing. Low German, Dutch, Frisian, Old English and Polish went into the mix. The Polish Communists banned the language after WW2, but the ban was lifted in 1956. Nevertheless, the language has been replaced by Polish, and the only speakers now are 70 elderly speakers, so it is moribund.

The Middle German languages, with West Middle German on the left and East Middle German on the right and Thuringian in light blue in the middle.
The Middle German languages, with West Middle German on the left and East Middle German on the right and Thuringian in light blue in the middle.
Ripuarian Franconian is a West Central German Central Franconian language spoken in northwest Germany on the borders of Netherlands and Belgium in North Rhine-Westphalia around the town of Cologne. Ripuarian Franconian consists of as low as 2 Some of the varieties include Bonn German or Bönnsch, Homburgisch, Lammersdorf, Neusser, Bad Neuenahr/Ahrweiler, and Bocholtz German, which may well be separate languages, but we will need more evidence before splitting them. Hommersch is a Ripuarian Franconian language at the other end of the huge Ripuarian dialect chain from Eschweiler German, and therefore it makes sense to split it into a separate language . Intelligibility with Kolsch is not known but is probably difficult. Eschweiler German, spoken in Eschweiler, Germany, is often considered to be  a SE Limburgish lect, but actually it is a Ripaurian lect as it has difficult intelligibility with Southeast Limburgs. It is intelligible with Stolberg German, but it has more Ripaurian influences (Tulipan 2013). It is said to be halfway between Aachen Platt and Kolsch. Intelligibility is 5
The various Low Franconian and Middle Franconian languages. D is Ripaurian, E is Moselle Franconian, F is Luxembourgish, G is Rhenish Franconian, H is South Franconian and I is East Franconian.
Moselle Franconian (Moselfränkisch) is a West Central German Central Franconian language spoken south of Ripuarian Franconian in Germany on the borders of Belgium and France and which also shades into Belgium and France. It is not intelligible with Luxembourgish other than that the westernmost dialects of Moselle are intelligible with the easternmost dialects of Luxembourgish near the Luxembourg border. Trier is a major city in this speaking area. There are many Moselle Franconian lects. All are spoken in Germany unless otherwise noted. Lorraine Franconian is a simply Moselle Franconian spoken in France. It is apparently intelligible with the Moselle Franconian spoken across the border in Germany. It is not intelligible with Standard German, Luxembourgish, or the Alemannic High German language Alsatian with which it is often paired, or with the Rhenish Franconian spoken in the Lorraine. It has 78,000 speakers. Use is decreasing, and only 2 It is mostly spoken in the Moselle Department of the state of Lorraine around Thionville. Hettangeois, Bitscherland, and Rodener are some of the dialects of Lorraine Franconian. Trierisch is spoken in Trier, Germany. The Trierisch dialect differs even within the city of Trier. Outside the city of Trier, the dialect is clearly different from that spoken in the city, and village residents do not refer to their lects as Trierisch. Eifler speakers cannot understand Trierisch and vice versa. However, Trierisch and Konz are intelligible with the East Luxembourgeois spoken in the far east of Luxembourg on the German border in the towns of Grevenmacher and Echternach. The following Moselle Franconian dialects are spoken in Germany. Reiler is spoken in and around Reil. There are various Moselle Franconian dialects spoken around the Schneifel Mountains and the Venn Region over near the Belgian border. Wäller is spoken in eastern Westerwald, on the border between Moselfränkisch and Hessisch. Westerwälder or West Westerwäldisch is spoken in the Westerwald. Wittlicher is spoken in Wittlich. Andernacher/Annenach/Annenache Platt is spoken in Andernach. It has more Ripuarian features than other Moselle lects due to its connection to Cologne. Unter Moselfränkisch is another Moselle dialect, but I am not sure where it is spoken. Kröver is a Moselle Franconian language spoken in the town of Kröv on the Mosel River. Germans who lived in the area refer to it as a separate language, however precise intelligibility data is unknown. Eifler or Eifelplatt is a Moselle Franconian dialect spoken in the Eifel Mountains in Germany. Eifler is so strange that intelligibility with Standard German is close to zero. It is said to be not intelligible to outsiders, but it is intelligible with the Bad Honningen dialect just to the west of Eifler. Eifler has dialects of its own, including Demerather, Maifeld, Southeifel, and Uebereltz. South Eifel is similar to Luxembourgish, in fact, the South Eifel spoken in Bitburg is often referred to simply as Luxembourgeois. Eifler is also spoken in Belgium around St. Vith. This was where the Battle of the Bulge was fought. Siegerländer or Siegerländish is a Moselle Franconian dialect spoken in the Siegerland region in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Luxembourgish (Lëtzebuergesch or Letzeburgisch) is a Moselle Franconian language spoken in Luxembourg. It is not intelligible with Moselle Franconian other than those Moselle dialects right next the German border with Luxembourg, where the easternmost dialects of Luxembourgish are intelligible with Moselle Franconian. Luxembourgish is close to the South Eifel dialect. There are several distinct varieties of Luxembourgish, but there is a Standard Luxembourgish emerging now in place of them. Luxembourgish is not used in the classroom, and there is a tendency of the state to use German and French in public announcements. Both languages are heavily promoted, such that Luxembourgers are typically trilingual. Although almost everyone speaks Luxembourgish, there is frustration on the part of speakers that the language cannot accommodate many modern and technical terms, for which German and French are often used instead. There is a heavy French influence. Luxembourgish has 4 It is also spoken in Belgium and France. In France, it is spoken in the Moselle Department of Lorraine around the Thionville area where Lorraine Franconian is also spoken (Hughes 2005). In Belgium, it is spoken in Arlerland in Eastern Belgium. East Luxembourgish is language spoken in the far east of Luxembourg around the cities of Grevenmacher and Echternach on the border with Germany. It is not intelligible with the rest of Luxembourgish, so it appears to be a separate language. However, it is intelligible with the West Moselle Franconian spoken across the border in Trier and Konz. In Germany, it is probably also spoken in Nittel, Welschbilling, Irrel, and Waserbillig, and elsewhere in Luxembourg in Mertert, Mombach, and Rosport. Since this is considered to be part of Luxembourgish and not Moselle Franconian, it is best to split is off as a separate Luxembourgish language. The exact borders of this language are not known – we do not know where the border between this language and Luxembourgeois is, we do not know where Trierisch ends and Eifler begins in the Eifel Mountains, we do not know where Trierisch lects become end and other Moselle Franconian lects begin heading up the Moselle River Valley, and we do not know the status of the Moselle Franconian lects to the southeast heading into northern Saarland. Transylvanian Saxon (Siebenbürger Sächsisch) itself is a macrolanguage of Germans in Romania. It is derived from a movement of German settlers to Transylvania from 1150-1230, so it has been split off from other German lects for a very long time. The first phase were settlers from the Luxembourg and Moselle region. The second phase from 1200-1230 consisted mostly of settlers from the Rhineland, southern Netherlands and Belgium and the Moselle region once again. A few others came from Thuringia, Bavaria and even France. The main area where they settled in the center of Romania is called the Transylvanian Saxon Triangle. Originally, it was basically an ancient form of the Moselle Franconian language because this is where most of the original settlers were from . It has incredible dialectal diversity, with over 250 documented dialects. Obviously, it is not intelligible with Standard German, but intelligibility data is lacking with the rest of Moselle Franconian, though considering the diversity of Moselle itself, this is probably for all intents and purposes a separate language from Moselle Franconian. Transylvanian Saxon has 8 Every village has its own dialect, and dialects can be quite different. Intelligibility data for the various Transylvanian Saxon dialects is lacking and urgently needed. At least in 1855, there were 7 distinct dialects of Transylvanian Saxon and at this time, there were mutually unintelligible dialects of Transylvanian Saxon (separate languages). In fact, prior to WW2, there were unintelligible dialects of Transylvanian Saxon between various villages, yet the Saxons had developed a Standard Transylvanian Saxon koine in order to communicate. Two separate languages may have been Hianzisch and Hittisch. They may well be extinct. Transylvanian Saxon originally was a dialect chain, but villages that were too far apart could not understand each other. Apparently since at least World War 2, heavy dialect leveling has occurred along with koine adoption and while Transylvanian Saxon at some point in the last 150 years was made up of separate languages, in recent years, enough dialect leveling has occurred and there has been enough dialect merger such that present day Saxons can understand each other well. No one really knows why it is called Saxon, except that before the immigrants moved into the area, they moved through the state of Saxony. With the return to capitalism in 1990, 9 The area around the cities of Media and Sibiu speak this language, and they they call it Siebenbürger Sachsen. It is still spoken today even by people in their 20’s. Rhine Franconian (Rheinfränkisch) is a family of lects that are spoken in the western German regions of Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate and Hessen and in northern Bas-Rhin in the state of Alsace. The Franconian language group is related to Hessian that is spoken in the Rhine River Valley in Germany over to the French border. It is not intelligible with Standard German. Rhine Franconian is also not intelligible with Moselle Franconian or with Luxembourgish. It is spoken to the southwest of the Hessian zone. In the western part of this area, Pfälzisch is spoken in restaurants, stores, offices, schools, theaters. You would almost think that Standard German is the foreign language. Pfälzisch is still very popular and most kids still grow up speaking it. Every village has a different dialect. Some of the dialects are Großrosseln, Saarbrücken, Zaisenhausen, Altrip, Bann, Gabsheim, Odenwälderisch, Rülzheim, Nordpfälzisch, Südpfälzisch, Wissembourg, Thaleischweiler-Fröschen and Pirmasens. Dialectal intelligibility is not known. Odenwälderisch, spoken in the Odenwald, a mountain chain in southern Hesse, northern Bavaria and northern Baden-Württemberg, has been influenced by South Hessian. Rülzheim is spoken in the Germersheim area along the Rhine. Pirmasens is spoken in the town of the same name in far southwest Palatine near the French border. Gabsheim is spoken in northern Palatine between Mainz and Alzey near the town of Wörrstadt. Bann is spoken in the town of Bann, near Kaiserslautern. Thaleischweiler-Fröschen is spoken in the Palatine Forest 4 miles north of Pirmasens. Altrip is spoken in the city of Altrip 4 miles south of Ludwigshafen. Großrosseln and Saarbrücken, spoken in the Saarland, are partway between Rhine Franconian and Moselle Franconian. Großrosseln is almost a suburb of Saarbrücken. Wissembourg is spoken in northern Alsace, France. Mainzerisch is spoken around the city of Mainz. Westpalatine German or West Pfälzisch is a major level split in the Rhine Franconian lects. This is a separate language from Rhine Franconian proper because speakers refer to Rhine Franconian as one language and this as another language. For instance, Saarlandsich speakers say that Frankish (Rhine Franconian) is a different language from what they speak (Anonymous 2014). Lects included in this grouping include Saarländisch, Saarpfälzisch, Westrichisch, Pfälzer-Bergländisch, Pfälzer-Wäldisch, Schwarzwälder-Hochwäldisch, Idarwäldisch, Hunsrückisch, Naheländisch, Rheinhessisch, Kaulbach, and Waldpfälzisch. Saarländisch, Saarpfälzisch and Westrichisch are spoken in the Saarland. Most of the rest are spoken in the Rheinland Palatine. Saarlännisch is a form of Westpfälzisch spoken in the Saarland. It is intelligible with the Lorraine Pfalzisch spoken right across the border in the French state of Lorraine (Hughes 2005). Saarlandisch is not intelligible with the rest of Westpfalzisch spoken in the Rhineland Palatinate (Anonymous 2014). Here is a sample of the Saarland dialect. There are various subdialects within Saarlännisch, including Eschringen, Ensheim, Saarlouis, and Irsch. Saarlouis is still spoken by almost everyone in the town, including teachers. Lorraine Pfalzisch is a Rhenish Franconian Westpfälzisch tongue spoken in northeast France in eastern Moselle Department in the state of Lorraine region. In the Lorraine, it is spoken between Forbach and Biche in the Moselle Department of Lorraine Province. The Rhenish Franconian spoken in Lorraine is not intelligible with the Luxembourgeois or with Lorraine Franconian spoken there. It is however intelligible with the Saarlännisch spoken just across the border in Germany in the state of Saarland (Hughes 2005). Lothringian Pfalzisch is a separate language spoken in the transitional area in Lorraine between the Lorraine Franconian (Moselle Franconian) speakers and the Lorraine Pfalzisch (Rhenish Franconian) speakers. This language is transitional between these two lects. However, the hard Lothringian Pfalzisch is not intelligible with Saarlandisch spoken over the border into Germany (Anonymous 2014). Since it is not intelligible with Saarlandisch, it is no doubt also not intelligible with Lorraine Pfalzisch, which is a part of Saarlandisch. Intelligibility with Moselle Franconian is not known but is probably not full. St. Arnold is a dialect. Intelligibility with Hunsrücker, a similar lect, is not known. Danube Swabian
is spoken by former residents of the Danube region of Europe, especially Hungary, but also in Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. Most were expelled from the area after WW2. They now live in Brazil and Germany. This language is not intelligible at all with Standard German and is  completely unintelligible with the Transylvanian Saxon that is spoken by other Hungarian Germans. Danube Swabian is ~30-4 This language is only nominally Swabian, but it does sound like a combination of the earlier forms of many German languages such as Swabian, Pfälzisch, Alemannic and Alsatian circa the 1700’s, because that is what it seems like it is. But actually the High German aspect is a secondary layer to the essential core of the language, which is, to pin it down, best thought of as a Rhine Franconian lect similar to Saarlännisch. It had many dialects, and you could often tell the particular village a person came from by his speech. It has many Hungarian borrowings. It is still spoken, but less and less. There are still many middle aged speakers age 45+. It was still widely spoken in 1989, and many people could not even speak Hungarian but only spoke Swabian. Mandatory classes in Standard German have been introduced, and Danube Swabian is spoken less often. The dialects are, incredibly enough, often regarded as largely mutually intelligible. However, other reports say that in Hungary, each village had its own dialect and adjacent villages sometimes could not understand each other (Bindorffer 2004). The latter report casts doubt on the mutual intelligibility of the Danube Swabian lects. In the Banat (a region encompassing parts of Romania, Serbia and Hungary) alone, at one time there may have been as many as 24 different dialects. Danube Swabian has high intelligibility with Black Sea German, a form of German spoken in the southern Ukraine. Pennsylvania German is a West Middle German Rhine Franconian (Rhenish Palatinate) macrolanguage that is descended from Pfälzisch. It is spoken in the USA. It is 7 There are 2-3 million speakers of Pennsylvania German in the US, Canada and Central and South America. It has high intelligibility with Danube Swabian. Speakers are generally members of the Amish religious sect, though not all. Most speakers live in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana in the US. It is often said that Pennsylvania German is one language with many dialects that are all mutually intelligible. However, recent data shows that this is not the case. There are differences in this language even within the same branch of Anabaptism. The differences are sometimes serious enough to cause major disruptions in communication (Bowie 1997). In Ohio at least, there are two groups of Amish Pennsylvania German speakers. The first group is descended from Amish who moved to Indiana from Pennsylvania and Ohio starting in the 1840’s. Swiss Pennsylvania German is the language spoken by the second group consisting of the second wave of Amish who came to the US from 1815-1860. They came mostly from Switzerland and went straight to Ohio. Swiss Pennsylvania German speakers and regular Pennsylvania German speakers in Ohio have poor mutual intelligibility hence they tend to communicate in English. Forepalatine German or very commonly used in everyday life. Dialect intelligibility is lacking. Alsatian Pfalzisch is a dialect of Vorderpfälzisch that was spoken by many German colonists in the Black Sea area. This variety of Black Sea German derived from many immigrants that came from the Pfalzisch-speaking part of Alsace in France and settled in Russia during the 1800’s. Many then moved from the Black Sea to North Dakota in the US. All forms – that spoken in the Black Sea, the form spoken in Alsace, and the form spoken in North Dakota – appear to be intelligible. It is not intelligible with the Low Alemannic Alsatian language widely spoken in Alsace. Intelligibility between this and the Lorraine Pfalzisch in Lorraine and Saarlännisch is not known. Texas German is apparently a Forepalatine dialect of German spoken by German settlers who came to central Texas in the 1840’s in an attempt to establish a New Germany in the US. It is an endangered language, and there are now projects to try to save it. The youngest speaker is 47 years old. Although it is a unique dialect, mutual intelligibility with Standard German is 9 Frankfurterisch South Hessian is a South Hessian dialect spoken in the city of Frankfurt. It has poor intelligibility with Bad Homburg South Hessian 10 miles north of town. It is intelligible with the Kurpfälzisch spoken in Heidelberg. Bad Homburg South Hessian is a South Hessian language that is spoken in and around Bad Homburg 10 miles north of Frankfurt in Southern Hessen. It is not intelligible with Frankfurterisch, but it is intelligible with lects spoken around it. Rhenish Hessian (Rheinhessisch) is a South Hessian dialect spoken in Rhenish Hessen around Mainz, Bingen, Bad Kreuznach, and in Hessen in the Rheingau area and Wiesbaden. Others place this language within Westpfälzisch. Rheingauer Rhinehessen is a dialect of Rhinehessen that is spoken in and around the wine-growing region of Rheingauer. It is intelligible with the rest of Rhenish Hessian.
The Franconian languages. Low Franconian (Dutch) in yellow, Middle Franconian in green and Upper Franconian in blue.
The Franconian languages. Low Franconian (Dutch) in yellow, Middle Franconian in green and Upper Franconian in blue.
Hessian is a West Middle German language spoken in Hessen that is closest to Pfalzisch. Hessian is only about 4 There are many Hessian lects, but intelligibility data is generally lacking between them. Some Hessian lects are surely separate languages. Hessian is spoken northeast of Pfälzisch. Hessian is not intelligible with Luxembourgish or with other Rheinish lects. There are several main varieties of Hessian: Lower Hessian (or Niederhessisch), Upper Hessian or Central Hessian (Oberhessisch or Mittelhessisch), West Hessian (Weshessisch), South Hessian (Südhessisch) and Wittgenstein Hessian. Within Lower Hessian, there are two subvariants, North Hessian (Nordhessisch) and East Hessian (Osthessisch). All of these have subdialects. Lower Hessian (Niederhessisch) is a family of German dialects which contains two large dialects, North Hessian and East Hessian. North Hessian (Nordhessisch) is a German dialect within Lower Hessian. Further, Hessian is an extremely diverse family. Schenklengsfeld and Kassel are dialects of North Hessian. North Hessian is no longer spoken in many parts of this region, especially in the cities. However, it is still quite alive in small villages, particularly around the Ohm River. East Hessian (Osthessisch) is part of the Lower Hessian group and is a separate language. Dialects include Salzung. Fulda East Hessian is not inherently intelligible with Schlitz East Hessian, though many Schlitz East Hessian speakers have learned to speak it (Wahl May 2009). Intelligibility with Voralberg East Hessian is unknown and needs investigation. Schlitz East Hessian (Schlitzerplatt) is a form of East Hessian spoken in the town of Schlitz and surrounding villages in Hessen. Speakers say (Wahl 2009) that it is not intelligible with any other German lects. Hence, it is a separate language. Schlitzerplatt is now nearly extinct in Schlitz itself, but it may still have a few elderly speakers in outlying villages (Wahl 2014). Voralberg East Hessian is a form of East Hessian spoken in the Voralberg region of the state of Hessen. It has poor intelligibility even with the nearby Schlitz East Hessian, even into the 2000’s. The region is described as desolate and the residents as poor farmers. The language is said to reflect the region and its residents and is described as “harsh, cold and brutal” (Wahl February 2010). The language is still widely spoken even recently. Since it has poor intelligibility even with Schlitzerplatt, it may well be a separate language. Upper Hessian or Central Hessian (Oberhessisch or Mittelhessisch), is another high level split in the Hessian family that is definitely a separate language. Central Hessian dialects include Holzhausen, Ruttershausen, Langenbach, and Hättenberger Land (the area around Wetzlar and Gießen). Within Central Hessian, there are probably numerous languages because it is not uncommon for village dialects to not be understood even a few miles away.
The Hessich Hinterland 150-200 years ago
The Hessich Hinterland 150-200 years ago
Wittgenstein Hessian is a highly divergent Hessian dialect that may or may not be a separate language. It is spoken in Wittgenstein in North Rhine-Westphalia. Volga German is a language or series of languages spoken by Germans in the Volga Region of Russia. Beginning in 1763, Catherine the Great urged Germans to come to Russia to farm empty lands. Many deeply impoverished Germans took up the call and migrated to Russia, where they were given land in the Volga Region. Volga German in general seems to be a West Middle German Rhenish Franconian language with deep affinities to Hessian, though there are Swabian influences too. It is almost completely unintelligible with Standard German. This language, like Yiddish, has been deeply influenced by Russian in terms of both lexicon and syntax. Since 1990, many have left Russia for Germany. As in the case of Bohemian German, this may be another trash can category for a variety of lects spoken by different German groups in the Volga. Although, arguing against this is evidence from the region in 1850 that a Standard Volga German koine (Kolonistendeutsch) was already developing. The language may have an archaic character. German visitors in 1924 noted that it sounded like 17th Century German. Amana German is still spoken in the Amana Colonies of Iowa. This area was settled by a fundamentalist German Lutheran group called the Inspirationists around 1850. Amana is a mixture of many different German lects, but it is primarily a Buedingen-Geldhausen Hessian lect. There is also major Swabian influence. Even in the US, each village continued to have its own dialect until major changes occurred in 1932, after which a Standard Amana German developed. Intelligibility with Amana German and the rest of German is not known. Ostfränkisch (East Franconian) is a High German language group transitional between Central and High German. It is spoken in Thuringia, Bavaria, Hessen and Baden-Württemberg around Eisenach, Coburg, Würzburg, Hof, Bayreuth, Plauen and Bamberg, in the area east of Frankfurt, to southern and western Thuringia and out to the Vogtland. It has a very high number of speakers. Klein-Allmerspan, Oberschefflenz, and Kupfer River are dialects. It is not intelligible at all with any type of Bavarian, even the Bavarian spoken nearby, and it is said to be only understandable by those who live there.
ostfraenkischer_sprachraum
Map of the East Franconian lects
Main-Franconian is one of the Ostfrankisch (East Franconian) High German languages that are transitional between Central and High German. It is spoken along the Main River which runs into the Rhine. It is spoken in Germany in the Main-Tauber District of Baden-Württemberg, in Upper Franconia (Oberfranken) in Bavaria, and in Schmalkalden-Meiningen, Hildburghausen, Sonneberg, and the city of Suhl in southern Thuringia. It is also spoken around Schlüchtern in Eastern Hesse near the border with northwest Bavaria. Major cities where it is spoken include Bayreuth. This language is not intelligible at all with German Bavarian (Kirmaier 2009). There are many Main-Franconian lects. Taubergründisch is an East Franconian lect spoken in Bavaria in Euerhausen and Sonderhofen, and in Baden-Württemberg in Weikersheim, Bad Mergentheim, and Tauberbischofsheim. This lect borders on South Franconian. Ansbachisch is an East Franconian lect. I am not sure where it is spoken. Lower Franconian (Unterfränkisch) is a Main-Franconian lect spoken in Würzburg and Schweinfurt in the Unterfranken or Lower Franconian region of Bavaria. There is high but not complete intelligibility between Lower Franconian and the rest of Main-Franconian (Kirmaier 2009), but it appears that Lower Franconian is not fully intelligible with Main-Franconian since Lower Franconian is not even intelligible within itself. However, Lower Franconian has huge dialectal diversity. There are apparently over 250 dialects of Lower Franconian alone. Some of these dialects are not very different, but others are so different that intelligibility is poor. Villages spaced far apart often have poor intelligibility. There are a number of separate languages in Lower Franconian, but until we can begin to delineate them, we can’t list any. These small lects appear to be dying out lately. Grabfeldisch is a Main-Franconian lect spoken in Bad Königshofen and Mellrichstadt in Bavaria, in Römhild and Frankenheim in Thuringia, and in Gersfeld and Hilders in Hessen. Schlüchtern may be a dialect. Bambergerisch is a Main-Franconian lect spoken in Bamberg, Forchheim, and Erlangen in Bavaria. not intelligible with Upper Saxon and probably with none of the other Main-Franconian lects either. Sonnebarger is a dialect spoken in Sonneberg. Frammersbacher Welschen is spoken in the town of Frammersbach in the Spessart area. It is a secret language, so not a dialect proper. Upper Franconian (Oberfränkisch) is a Main-Franconian lect spoken in Bavaria in Bayreuth, Kulmbach, Kronach, Hof, and Lichtenfels. It has high, but not full, intelligibility with Lower Franconian. Hof Upper Franconian (Hofer) is the Upper Franconian language spoken in Hof. Hofer is very divergent, even within itself, and in all probability it is a separate language. The Vogtlandisch language in far southwestern Saxony. Includes some Thuringian lects in Eastern Thuringia.
The Vogtländisch dialects in far southwestern Saxony. Includes some Thuringian lects in Eastern Thuringia.
Erzgebirgisch is an East Middle German language related to East Franconian. Although it is often said to be an Upper Saxon language, the latest thinking is that it is separate from Upper Saxon, and it has little in common linguistically with Upper Saxon. Neither is it intelligible with Upper Saxon. A good case can be made that it is an East Franconian language. It has high intelligibility with Vogtlandisch and some of the furthermost east varieties of East Franconian. It is spoken on on the border with the former Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in Saxony, especially in the area of the Erzgebirge or Ore Mountains. There are other dialects spoken far away in the Harz Mountains in Lower Saxony. It is losing ground to Upper Saxon, and many speakers are emigrating out of the area, hence the language is declining, but it still has 500,000 speakers. It is also close to Bavarian. There has been little research on this language since 1929 and even that dealt only with Upper Harz. Historically, this language was created during the 1100’s and 1200’s as East Franconian speakers  from the West moved into the Ore Mountains and either displaced or assimilated Slavic speakers. It has at least seven dialects, Upper Erzgebirgisch, Fore Erzgebirgisch (Vorerzgebirgisch), East Erzgebirgisch, West Erzgebirgisch, Clausthal-Zellerfeld Erzgebirgisch, Upper Harz Erzgebirgisch, and North Erzgebirgisch. Fore Erzgebirgisch is transitional to East Franconian. All dialects are intelligible. Upper Harz Erzgebirgisch is located far away from the rest of the dialects to the north in the Upper Harz Mountains (see map below) of Lower Saxony. This dialect is nearly extinct. It still has many elderly speakers, but it is probably not being passed on to children. This dialect is the most different of all, but it is still intelligible with the rest of Erzgebirgisch (Goldammer 2009). This lect is spoken in the Upper Harz Mountains, is heavily influenced by Ostfälisch and is nearly extinct. It is spoken around the city of Clausthal-Zellerfeld in Lower Saxony. This lect is different mostly in that it is very archaic. West Erzgebirgish (Westerzgebirgisch), is an Erzgebirgisch dialect spoken around Scheeberg, Marienberg, and Annaberg. This language is not intelligible with Standard German and is regarded as being one of the toughest dialects for Standard German speakers to understand. Intelligibility with Standard German is surely below 4 As of 20 years ago, this language was still the considerable, but the two are nevertheless intelligible. This lect has a lot of Upper Franconian elements, along with a lot of influence from Eastern Meissenish. West Erzgebirgisch is also similar to Vogtlandisch. Osterzgebirgisch or East Erzgebirgisch , an Erzgebirgisch dialect, represents a transitional dialect between West Erzgebirgish and Upper Saxon. This dialect has very heavy Upper Saxon influence, and it is losing speakers. This lect is close to Meissenish.
The Erzgebirgisch lects located in Saxony near Chemnitz.
The Erzgebirgisch dialects located in Saxony near Chemnitz.

References

Anonymous. Saarlandsich native speaker. Personal communication, Yosemite National Park, California. March 2014. Bowie, David. 1997. Was Mir Wisse: A Review of the Literature on the Languages of the Pennsylvania Germans. In Current Work in Linguistics, ed. Costin, Paul. Siebenbürger Sachsen native speaker. Personal communication. April 2014. Dimitriadis, Alexis; Lee, Hikyoung; Siegel, Laura; Surek-Clark, Clarissa, and Williams, Alexander, 4 (3):1-18. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. Denison, Norman. 1971. Some Observations on Language Variety and Plurilingualism, chapter 7 in Ardener, Edwin. Social Anthropology and Language. London: Tavistock Publications. Giesser, Diane. Danube Swabian native speaker. Personal communication. December 2014. Goldammer, Thomas. Erzgebirgisch and Upper Saxon native speaker. Personal communication. August 2009. Guion, S. 1996. The Death of Texas German in Gillespie County. In P.S. Ureland and I. Clarkson (eds.), Language Contact Across the North Atlantic. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. 443-463. Hughes, Stephanie. 2005. Bilingualism in North-East France With Specific Reference to Rhenish Franconian Spoken by Moselle Cross-border (or Frontier) Workers. In Preisler, Bent, et al., eds. The Consequences of Mobility: Linguistic and Sociocultural Contact Zones. Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde Universitetscenter Institut for Sprog og Kultur. Jeep, John M., editor. 2001. Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia. New York and London: Garland. Kirmaier, Andrea. Oberpfälzisch North Bavarian native speaker. Personal communication. March 2009. Liesenberg, Friedrich. 1890. Die Stieger Mundart: ein Idiom des Unterharzes, besonders hinsichtlich der Lautlehre dargestellt, pp. 178. Charleston, SC: Bibliolife.
Myhill, John. 2006. Zu Transkriptionskonventionen Bei Plosiven im Übergangsgebiet Zwischen Moselfränkischen und Rheinfränkischen Dialekten im Germanophonen Lothringen (Frankreich). Phonus 3:25-60. Ross, Charles. 1989. contribution to support more of this valuable research.

A Reworking of German Language Classification, Part 1: Low German

Updated June 28, 2016. This post will be regularly updated for some time. Warning! This essay is very long; it runs to 66 pages on the Internet. This is part 1 of the essay: Low German. Part 2 deals with Central German and Part 3 deals with High German. This classification splits Low German from 10 languages into 12 languages using the criterion of >9 Low German or Low Saxon is a group of far northern German dialects. Dialects up by Hamburg and Friesland sound like English. According to an older edition of Ethnologue, there are 20-30 Low German lects which are all mutually unintelligible. None of the Low German languages are intelligible with Standard German. Low German differs from region to region and even from village to village. Ethnologue says that there are only 1,000 speakers of Low German, but that 10 million can understand the language. This is completely wrong. On the basis of a recent survey conducted in the former West Germany 25 years ago, 2 This means that 25 years ago, there were 10 million people in West Germany alone who could speak Low German to one degree or another. Until fairly recently, most Low German speakers could only speak their Low German language and nothing else.

Low Saxon dialects extending from Netherlands to Lithuania
Low Saxon dialects extending from Netherlands to Lithuania.
Low German has over 4,000 different dialects in it. As late as 1960, a situation existed from Hamburg west to the Netherlands border in Germany whereby, while most spoke Standard German, most also spoke regional dialects. In general, one village could understand the next couple of villages over, but beyond that, things got dicey. So even 50 years, you had many de facto separate languages of Low German. The question is how many of these separate languages still exist.
Another view of Low Saxon dialects
Another view of Low Saxon dialects
Even today, more pure forms of Low Saxon have about 4 Recent writings suggest that all Low Saxon speakers can communicate adequately in any of these disparate lects. This flies in the face of SIL’s earlier statement about 20-30 inherently unintelligible languages. Therefore, there needs to be an assessment on the ground of what existing Low Saxon lects look like and how intelligible they are with each other. Some descriptions describe the type of intelligibility within Low Saxon as akin to that between the Scandinavian languages. However, recent findings seem to indicate that the mutual intelligibility of the Scandinavian languages is much exaggerated. Having seen transcriptions of translations of a single short story into different Low Saxon lects, it seems clear to me that they differ dramatically. Ethnologue has already split off Westphalian and East Frisian Low Saxon, so the matter is settled as far as those two go. All of the rest are lumped into Low German as some possibly dubious macrolect. The situation regarding intelligibility within German Low Saxon remains very confused. North Low Saxon is a Low Saxon language spoken in the north of Germany. It is understood across a wide region. There is a standard version based broadly on the Hamburg dialect that is widely used on TV and in the media. Dialects include Holsteinisch, Schleswigsch, Bremen, Hamburgs, Emsland and Oldenberg. All of these dialects are apparently mutually intelligible, though transcribed versions of them are often quite divergent. Schleswig-Holstein is a North Low Saxon language spoken in the Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany. Holsteinisch North Low Saxon and Schleswigsch North Low Saxon appear to be mutually intelligible, but some speakers of Schleswig-Holstein have difficulty understanding North Low Saxon from Lower Saxony to the south. Angel German
is a North Low Saxon language spoken in the Anglen region of far northern German. This region stretches from the Baltic Sea in the north and east to the Dannevirke and the Slie in the south and the moors in the west, a triangle of 350 square miles. This is where the Angles who invaded England and gave the name of the country and the language their name came from. Angel German to this day sounds somewhat like English. Angel German is poorly understood even by other Low German speakers because it still has many Danish words and grammar (Bock 1933). Most of the grammar is German, but understood by sailors and fishermen from any of the Baltic Sea nations. Hamburgisch is a North Low Saxon dialect that serves as something like the official form of Low Saxon, a koine, or Standard Low Saxon, in Germany. It is widely understood across the Low Saxon speaking region. The language itself is spoken and around Hamburg. Ollands, spoken in Ollands, a fruit and vegetable growing region of northern Germany on the Lower Elbe, is a subdialect of Hamburgisch. Other subdialects include Finkwarder, Kirchwerder, Harburg , Olwarder, Veerlanner (with many sub-subdialects), and Barmbeker. Kirchwerder is spoken 12 miles southeast of Hamburg. There are still some middle-aged speakers of Hamburgisch, and the language is doing better than most Low Saxon lects. In addition, there are also some young speakers of Hamburgish, especially on islands off the coast of the mouth of the Elbe River. Subdialects include North Oldenburg (Nordoldenburger). It may be intelligible with Holsatian, Hamburgs, Schleswigsch and Bremen. here. Dialects spoken in Germany include South Emsland (Südemsländisch), Hümmlinger, South Oldenburg (Südoldenburgisch), North Osnabrück (Nordosnabrückisch), and West Diepholzer. South Oldenburg is spoken in Oldenburger Münsterland.
Dialect in North Rhine Westphalia. North Low Saxon, Westphalian, Eastphalian, Hessian, Ripaurian, Low Franconian and Moselle Franconian are shown.
Dialect in North Rhine Westphalia. North Low Saxon, Westphalian, Eastphalian, Hessian, Ripaurian, Low Franconian and Moselle Franconian are shown.
doing fairly well, but not great, compared to other Low Saxon lects. There are still a tiny number of speakers in Iowa in the Waterloo and Cedar Falls area of Blackhawk and Bremer Counties. Dialects include West Munsterland (Westmünsterländisch), South Westphalian (Südwestfälisch), and Bentheimisch. Steinfurt is a Munsterlandish dialect spoken in Westphalia around Munster. It is quite different from Munster Westphalian proper. This language is transitional between North Saxon, Eastphalian and Westphalian. This seems to be the lect that is often described as Grafschafter Platt (County Language). The term “county” refers to the fact that this region was one of the few in Germany that had was ruled by a count (a feudal figure like a duke). Grafschafter Platt seems to be spoken in the region between Osnabrück (Emsland) and Munsterland and over to the Dutch border where it looks like it borders on Twents. There are a tremendous number of dialects in this language, especially over by the Dutch border. It’s not really correct to say that each village has its own dialect, but there is definitely a dialect continuum with new dialects every few villages or so. The five main dialects are Gildehaus, Upper Grafschaft, Nordhorn, Lower Grafschaft, and Wietermarschen Group. Wietermarschen Group is spoken in Wietermarschen, Drievorden, and Engden. Nordhorn is spoken in the city of that name. Lower Grafschaft is spoken around the towns of Emlichheim, Laar, and Hoogstede. Lower Grafschaft has heavy Dutch influence, more than any other West Low German language spoken in Germany. This language has undergone a serious decline in the past 50 years. It is now spoken by 2 Lübbecke is an East Westphalian language that is spoken in and around Lübbecke and to the north. The variety from around the towns of Stemwede and Oppenwehe has poor intelligibility with the Osnabrück Westphalian spoken around Bad Ilburg south of Osnabrück only 25 miles to the southwest. The region is heavily forested. Sauerland is an East Westphalian language, definitely a separate language, spoken in Westphalia in the Sauerland, which is in southeast North Rhine-Westphalia. Although it is related to Westphalian, it is a separate language and is not intelligible with other forms of Westphalian or Low German. This language is definitely still spoken. There are other languages spoken in the Ruhr-Sauerland region. Gladbeck is an East Westphalian language spoken in the town of Gladbeck. Gladbeck is a town located in the Ruhr between Gelsenkirchen and Bottrop and north of Essen. Solling is an extremely divergent lect of Eastphalian that is spoken in the Solling Forest of Lower Saxony. It is dying out, but the pure form of it is still spoken by the elderly. It is very strange and is said to sound like the Frisian language. It is quite possible that this is a separate language, as it is said to be quite distant from Eastphalian proper. Elbostfälisch is an Eastphalian language spoken around Oschersleben and Haldensleben in the Magdeburger Börde, which is between Helmstedt and Magdeburg. It is spoken on the west side of the Elbe River from Magdeburg west to the Harz Mountains in Saxony-Anhalt. This language has heavy influence from East Low German and is actually transitional between East and West Low German. It is still in very good shape and is widely spoken in Magdeburg at least. Göttingisch-Grubenhagensch is a dialect of Eastphalian spoken around Göttingen, Northeim, and Osterode am Harz. It is mostly spoken by older people now. Central Eastphalian is is a dialect of Eastphalian spoken in a large area surrounding Braunschweig and Hanover. It is mostly spoken by older people now. This dialect is in particularly poor shape. Papenteicher is an Eastphalian dialect spoken just north of Brunswick. There are only about 300 speakers left. It is no longer taught to children. There are many more who know individual words and phrase. The language is almost never heard in the region anymore. This dialect has some interesting sounds that are only heard in Friesland and Jutland. It is thought that the region was originally settled by people from this region 1,500 years ago. East Low German is a group of languages spoken in Mecklenburg – West Pomerania and Brandenburg and surrounding areas, including over into Poland. The two main branches are Mecklenburgish-Pomeranian and Markish. Low Prussian is not included in this grouping – it is a separate group. These are more recent lects, created from West Low German lects with Russian and Standard German admixture. Mecklenburgisch is an East Low Saxon dialect spoken in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. It has very high to excellent intelligibility with North Low Saxon, so it may only be a dialect of Low German. It is spoken in far northeastern Germany around Straslund and Rostock. This area was once Slavic, but Charlemagne moved Germans in this area. These Germans spoke Low German. Many of these immigrants also spoke Frisian, so there is an element of that too. However, in the 1700’s, High German became such a strong force in the area that this dialect began to be mixed with High German. The dialect remains very archaic, as the region is very resistant to change in general. This dialect is doing ok, but not great, compared to other Los Saxon lects. Although it is officially an East Low German dialect, it is actually on the border between East Low German and West Low German. Before 1945, this dialect was the main means of communication in the villages. Vorpommern or West Pomeranian is an East Low Saxon language spoken in Western Pomerania, Vorpommern or Hither Pomerania, however you want to translate the term. This is a part of far northeast Germany on the border with Poland. The northern border is the North Sea. This language is doing ok, but not great, compared to other Low Saxon lects. As part of a dialect continuum, Pomeranian is clearly not intelligible with East Frisian Low Saxon, but it may be intelligible with Mittelpommersch or Mecklenburgisch. Pomeranian or East Pomeranian is a Markish language spoken in Poland. This area was Slavic in the 600’s. The Danes laid waste to the area in the 1000’s. The destruction was so severe that the rulers invited German farmers to the area to rehabilitate the land, and this interesting language developed. Speakers are all elderly and scattered, and the language is moribund. This language was also decimated by the expulsion of Germans from Poland after WW2. There are five major dialects: West Prussian (Westpreußisch) was formerly spoken in West Prussia. Western Further Pomeranian (Westhinterpommersch) was formerly spoken in western Further Pomerania. Eastern Further Pomeranian (Osthinterpommersch) was formerly spoken in eastern Further Pomerania. Bublitzisch was formerly spoken in Bublitz (now Bobolice), Poland. Pomerelian (Pommerellisch) was formerly spoken in a region called Pomerelia. Pomeranian is not intelligible with Low Prussian or other Low German languages. There is still a significant Pomeranian community in Brazil, and there are some Pomeranian speakers in the US too. North Margravian or Mittelpommersch is a Markish dialect spoken in the northern part of Brandenburg State around Prenzlau and Wittenberg and in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania around Pasewalk-Ueckermünde. This dialect has or had two subdialects, West Middle Pomeranian (Westmittelpommersch) and East Middle Pomeranian (Ostmittelpommersch). East Middle Pomeranian was spoken in the Lower Oder River region of Poland around Stettin and Stargard and may well be extinct since 1945. West Middle Pomeranian is still alive and is spoken in the areas discussed above. There is some activity to keep this language going, and there are still some speakers left. Before 1945, this language was still the main medium of communication in almost all of the villages in the area. North Markish (Nordmärkisch or Altmärkisch) is a Markish dialect spoken in Salzwedel, Gardelegen and Stendal in far northern Saxony-Anhalt. This dialect has Eastphalian influences. Westprignitzisch is a Markish dialect spoken in Perleberg, Pritzwalk, and Wittstock in far northwestern Brandenburg. Ostprignitzisch is a Markish dialect spoken in Löwenberg, Templin, Zehdenick, and Fürstenberg in far northern Brandenburg. The Prignitz dialects show less Dutch influence than other dialects in the area. They are also close to Mecklenburgish. New Markish (Neumärkisch) is a Markish dialect spoken in Angermünde and Schwedt/Oder in northeastern Brandenburg. Flämingisch is a Markish dialect spoken in Jüterbog and Buchenwald in Brandenburg south of Berlin near the border with Saxony-Anhalt and in Saxony-Anhalt in areas north of Wittenberg. Flämingisch is transitional between Low German and Middle German. It is little spoken anymore except by the elderly who are partial speakers. Persons composing a dictionary have only been able to come up with about 1,500 words. It is clearly dying out. Havelländisch is a Markish dialect spoken in Rathenow, Premnitz and Nauen in Brandenburg west of Berlin. extinct, and may even be extinct, and that speakers for the most part have reverted to a Berlinisch sort of dialect of German. However, this new lect (or whatever lect they area speaking) is unintelligible with Standard German. This language, whatever form it is taking, is still going very strong as of three years ago. New Mecklenburgish is spoken north and northwest of Berlin around Oranienburg and Neuruppin. It is not in good shape and is under heavy pressure from Berlinisch and Standard German. In fact, it may well be de facto extinct. Investigation is needed to determine if this dialect even exists anyone, or has reverted to some sort of Berlinisch dialect. Low Prussian (Niederpreußisch) is a separate branch of Low German spoken in eastern Poland. It is spoken in the region where the Slavic Kashubian language is spoken, so it received some influence from that language. This area was Slavic in the 1200’s and became German in the 1700’s. This is a full language, not intelligible with Standard German or with any other German language. It used to have many speakers, but now it is moribund. There are a few elderly speakers left, but no language community. It has 11 major dialects. Low Prussian-East Pomeranian (Übergangsmundart zum Ostpommerschen) was a transitional dialect with East Pomeranian. Vistula Delta (Weichselmündungsgebietes) was spoken around Danzig (Gdansk) at the mouth of the Vistula River. Frischen-Danzig Spit (Frischen-Nehrung Danziger-Nehrung) was spoken around the Vistula Lagoon. Elbing Heights (Elbinger Höhe) was spoken around Elbing (Elblag). Kürzungs was spoken around Braunsberg (Braniewo). West Käslausch (Weskäslausch) was spoken around Mehlsack (Pieniezno). East Käslausch (Ostkäslausch) was spoken around Rößel (Reszel). Natangian-Bartish (Natangisch-Bartisch) was spoken around Bartenstein (Bartoszyce). West Sambian (Westsamländisch) was spoken around Pillau (Baltiysk). East Sambian (Ostsamländisch) was spoken around Königsberg (Kaliningrad), Labiau (Polessk) and Znamensk (Wehlau). Eastern (Ostgebietes) was spoken around Insterburg (Chernyakhovsk), Memel (Klaipeda) and Sovetsk (Tilsit). Another dialect was Haff (Haff Niederpreußisch). It is not known where this dialect was spoken. Dialect intelligibility is not known. It became moribund due to the expulsion of Prussian speakers from Poland after WW2. It is not intelligible with other Low German languages or with Pomeranian. There are apparently still some speakers in Wisconsin.

References

Auer, Peter. The Construction Of Linguistic Borders And The Linguistic Construction Of Borders. 2005. In Filppula, Markku, Palander, Marjatta and Penttilä, Esa (eds.) Dialects Across Borders: Selected Papers From the 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI), Joensuu, August 2002. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 273. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Bock, Karl Nielson. 1933. Niederdeutsch auf dänischem Substrat. Studien zur Dialektgeographie Südostschleswigs. Mit 51 Abbildungen und einer Karte. Kph.
Denison, Norman. 1971. Some Observations on Language Variety and Plurilingualism, Chapter 7 in Ardener, Edwin. Social Anthropology and Language. London: Tavistock Publications.
Gosch, Christian Carl August. 1861. The Nationality of Slesvig. London: Chapman and Hall.
Harms, Biggi. German and Düsseldorferisch Bergisch native speaker. March 2009.
Jeep, John M., ed. 2001. Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia. New York and London: Garland.
Myhill, John. 2006.
Wiggers, Heiko. 2006. Reevaluating Diglossia: Data from Low German. PhD dissertation. Austin, TX: University of Texas at Austin.

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How Ethnologue Splits a Language From a Dialect

Like this:

* Two related varieties are normally considered varieties of the same language if speakers of each variety have inherent understanding of the other variety at a functional level (that is, can understand based on knowledge of their own variety without needing to learn the other variety). * Where spoken intelligibility between varieties is marginal, the existence of a common literature or of a common ethnolinguistic identity with a central variety that both understand can be a strong indicator that they should nevertheless be considered varieties of the same language. * Where there is enough intelligibility between varieties to enable communication, the existence of well-established distinct ethnolinguistic identities can be a strong indicator that they should nevertheless be considered to be different languages.

It’s all pretty confusing, but it gives you something to mull over in your spare time if you choose. I’ve been mulling over this stuff for months now. The last refers to cases like the Croat, Serbian and Bosnian languages. Marginal intelligibility in the second case refers to intelligibility of about 9 The first is crucial. Inherent intelligibility means virgin ears. Everything else is called “bilingual learning” and doesn’t count. If you understand the other lect because you’ve been hearing it forever, that means you have learned a new lect via language learning. Inherent intelligibility means exposing people who have never heard the lect before to the new lect and then seeing how much they can get. As you can see, it’s not exactly rocket science and there’s fudging everywhere. That’s what physics envy is all about. The social sciences are fuzzy by nature. Why? We deal with human nature, and that’s not so quantifiable right there, mysterious critters that we are and all. If that bothers you, put on a smock and head for the lab instead. Nobody’s forcing you to get a Sociology degree. Stuff like how our bodies work (medicine) is a lot more hard science-ish, but that’s getting out of the human nature thing.

North Sea Fisherman Patois

Interesting quote from the Free Republic:

I used to work with a Dutch guy who said that he was at some sort of North Sea confab, and when people spoke in their national languages they couldn’t understand one another but when they spoke their local dialects, they found them mutually intelligible. Who knows?

I have heard this before. A fisherman who lived in Heikendorf on the Eastern coast of Germany on the border between Schleswig and Holstein said that when he spoke his particular North Low Saxon dialect to any fisherman in the North Sea region, they could all understand it. It was as if all of the fisherman, and only the fishermen, of the North Sea, all spoke a common language (in Linguistics we often call this a “jargon”) that they could all understand. The fishermen must have been from northern Germany, western Denmark, southern Norway, northern Netherlands, northern Belgium and the east coast of England and Scotland. Far northern Low German looks like Danish, English and Dutch. Flemish, a Dutch language, is spoken in coastal Belgium. Frisian is close to English, Low German, Scots and Danish and is spoken on the Netherlands coast. Dialects of southern Norway look like Danish. Scots sounds similar to Frisian, English, Low German, and Danish. The English and Scots dialects of the eastern coast of the UK received major Scandinavian input. West Danish languages like Jutish look like Scots. Somehow, all those fishermen just learned to talk to each other. Why? Maybe because they had to. Jargons are interesting. We call them trade languages in Linguistics. Chinook Jargon is a famous one. This was a mixed language made up of I think English, French and many Indian languages that was spoken by White and Indian traders in the Pacific Northwest. Jargons seem to be full-fledged languages, unlike pidgins, which really are just poor excuses for languages. The reason for this is that the jargons are made up of the first languages of many speakers and pidgins are based on the inferior second language acquisition of adult language learners, who never really get the language right. I will discuss pidgins and hopefully creoles and koines in another post.

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