Alsatian language

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Alsatian
Elsässerdeutsch, Alsacien
Spoken in: France
Total speakers: more than 700,000
Language family: Indo-European
 Germanic
  West Germanic
   High German
    Upper German
     Alemannic German
      Alsatian
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2:
ISO 639-3: gsw
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See Help:IPA for a pronunciation key.

Alsatian (Elsässerditsch; French: Alsacien; German: Elsässisch or Elsässerdeutsch) is a Low Alemannic German dialect spoken in most of Alsace, a region in eastern France which has passed between French and German control many times.

Not readily intelligible to speakers of standard German, it is closely related to other nearby Alemannic dialects, such as Swiss German, Swabian, and Badisch. It is often confused with Lorraine Franconian, a more distantly related Franconian dialect spoken in the far north-east of Alsace and in neighboring Lorraine.

Many speakers of Alsatian write in standard German. Street names in the Alsace may use Alsatian spellings (they were formerly displayed only in French but are now bilingual in some places, especially Strasbourg)

A bilingual (French and Alsatian) sign in Alsace.
A bilingual (French and Alsatian) sign in Alsace.

Contents

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Consonants

Alsatian has a rather simple set of 14 consonants:

Labial Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Velar
Nasal m n ŋ
Stop b̥ d̥ ɡ̊, kʰ
Affricate pf ts
Fricative f s ʃ ç
Sonorant ʋ l, ɾ

Two consonants are restricted in their distribution: /kʰ/ only occurs at the beginning of a word or morpheme, and then only if followed immediately by a vowel; /ŋ/ never occurs at the beginning of a word or morpheme.

Alsatian, like many German dialects, has lenitioned all obstruents but [k]. Its lenes are, however, voiceless as in all Southern German varieties. Therefore, they are here transcribed /b̥/, /d̥/, /ɡ̊/.

As in German, the phoneme /ç/ has a velar allophone [x] after back vowels (/u/, /o/, /ɔ/, and /a/ in those speakers who do not pronounce this as [æ]), and palatal [ç] elsewhere. In southern dialects, there is a tendency to pronounce it /x/ in all positions, and in Strasbourg the palatal allophone tends to become [ʃ], and conflate with the phoneme /ʃ/.

[edit] Vowels

Short vowels: /ʊ/, /o/, /ɒ/, /a/ ([æ] in Strasbourg), /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /i/, /y/.

Long vowels: /ʊː/, /oː/, /ɒː/, /aː/, /ɛː/, /eː/, /iː/, /yː/

[edit] Diphthongs

[edit] Comparative vocabulary list

English Alsatian High Alemannic Standard German Standard French Swabian German dialect
house Hüüs [hyˑs] Huus Haus maison Hous
loud lüüt [lyˑd̥] luut laut bruyant lout
people Lit [lɪd̥] Lüt Leute gens Leid
today hit [hɪd̥] Hüt heute aujourd'hui heid
beautiful schen [ʃeːn] schö schön beau sche
Earth Ard [aˑɾd̥] Ärd Erde terre Erd
Fog Nabel [naːb̥l̩] Näbel Nebel brouillard Nebl
water Wàsser [ʋɑsəɾ] Wasser Wasser eau Wasser
man Mànn [mɑˑn] Maa Mann homme Mà
eat assa [asə] ässe essen manger essa
to drink trenka [d̥ɾənɡ̊ə] trinkche trinken boire trenka
little klai [ɡ̊laɪ̯] chlei klein petit, petite kloi
child Kind [kɪnd̥] Chind Kind enfant Kind
day Däi [] Dag Tag jour Dàg
woman Frài [] Frou Frau femme Frau

[edit] Status of Alsatian in France

The constitution of the Fifth Republic states that French alone is the official language of the Republic. However Alsatian, along with other regional languages, are recognized by the French government in the official list of languages of France. A 1999 INSEE survey counted 548,000 adult speakers of Alsatian in France, making it the second most-spoken regional language in the country (after Occitan). Like all regional languages in France, however, the transmission of Alsatian is on the decline. While 39% of the adult population of Alsace speaks Alsatian, only one in four children speaks it, and only one in ten children uses it regularly.

[edit] References

  • (French)[1] François Héran, et al. (2002) "La dynamique des langues en France au fil du XXe siècle". Population et sociétés 376, Ined.
  • (French)[2] "L'alsacien, deuxième langue régionale de France" Insee, Chiffres pour l'Alsace no. 12, December 2002
  • (French)Brunner, Jean-Jacques. L'alsacien sans peine. ASSiMiL, 2001. ISBN 2-7005-0222-1
  • (French)Laugel-Erny, Elsa. Cours d'alsacien. Les Editions du Quai, 1999.
  • (French)Matzen, Raymond, and Léon Daul. Wie Geht's ? Le dialecte à la portée de tous La Nuée Bleue, 1999. ISBN 2-7165-0464-4
  • (French)Matzen, Raymond, and Léon Daul. Wie Steht's ? Lexiques alsacien et français, Variantes dialectales, Grammaire La Nuée Bleue, 2000. ISBN 2-7165-0525-X

[edit] External links

Wikipedia