Kölsch language

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Kölsch
Spoken in:	Germany
Region:	Cologne and environs
Total speakers:	250,000
Language family:	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic High German Kölsch
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`gem`
ISO 639-3:	`ksh`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

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Kölsch (Colognian) is a very closely related small set of dialects, or variants, of the Ripuarian Central German group of languages. Kölsch is spoken in, and partially around Cologne, in the West of Germany.

In Cologne, it is actively spoken by about 250,000 people, roughly one quarter of the population. Almost all speakers are also fluent in standard German. It is widely understood in a region inhabited by some 10 million people (a conservative estimate).

There are local (increasingly divergent) variants of Kölsch in the Quarters, most notably those only recently incorporated into the city. Sometimes, also the far more than 100 clearly distinct Ripuarian languages of Belgium, Netherlands, and German Rhineland are incorrectly referred to as Kölsch, as well as the so called rheinisch tongue. In fact, the rheinisch regiolect has very little in common with Kölsch, being a variety of standard German, to which it is so close that local speakers of lesser education usually cannot even tell the difference.

Kölsch is one of the variants of the Ripuarian dialects (also known as the Rhineland or rheinisch dialects - as opposed to the regiolect), which belong to the West Franconian family, itself a variant of West Middle German. It is closely related to the lower Rhineland (niederrheinisch) and Moselle Franconian (moselfränkisch) dialects and combines some features of them, as well as a bunch of words being hardly used elsewhere. Common with the Limburgish language group and other Ripuarian languages, it has a distinct intonation, referred to as the 'singing' rheinisch tone. In fact, there are several, rather often used words only distinguishable by slight intonation differences, very noticeable ones to locals, though. Also Kölsch conveys different meaning by different intonation inside sentences; for example each of: He meant what he said, He was only consoling (someone), He knew what he was saying, He did not mean what he said, He was lying/pretending, He said exactly that, It is most questionable that he said something like that, He did say that, It was him who said that (and no one else), He has expressed that precisely so, He would have said that so (but was involuntarily kept from), He said that so orally (but did not write it, sign it, etc.), and six different questions, can be meant by: Dat hätt dä esu jesaat.

In its modern form it is of comparatively recent origin. It particularly thrived in contact with French during the occupation of Cologne under Napoleon Bonaparte from 1794-1815 and thus contains many words from and expressions pertaining to French. There are also phonological similarities in that it is regarded a very nasal dialect by some, and it exhibits consonant liaison.

Kölsch is unusually well documented through the work of the Akademie för uns Kölsche Sproch and scholars like Adam Wrede whose publications include a dictionary, a grammar and a variety of phrase books. While Kölsch is not commonly taught in schools (although there are often extracurricular offerings) and a lot of young people do not have a proper command of it, many theaters exist that perform exclusively in Kölsch, most notably the Volkstheater Millowitsch, named after the late Willy Millowitsch (1909-1999) and the famous puppet theater, Hänneschentheater. There has also recently been an increase in literature written in this dialect and both traditional music and rock in Kölsch are very popular in Cologne, especially around Carnival. The Kölsch rock group BAP is even among the most successful rock bands in Germany. Another noticeable phenomenon is the watered-down usage of the dialect by German TV personalities, like comedian Gabi Köster.

In Kölsch, kölsch was originally and still is an adjective meaning 'of or pertaining to Cologne' and was nominalized to refer to the dialect or to the local beer.