Upper Saxon German

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Upper Saxon
Spoken in:	Saxony
Total speakers:	—
Language family:	Indo-European Upper Saxon
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`–`
ISO 639-3:	`sxu`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Upper Saxon (German: Obersächsisch or colloquially (but incorrectly), Sächsisch) is a Central German dialect spoken in much of the modern German States of Saxony and Thuringia. The degree of accent varies from place to place within the states, with it being anywhere from a relatively mild accent in the larger cities such as Dresden or Chemnitz, to a stronger form in rural areas. In the villages of the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) a distinct dialect ("Erzgebirgisch") is spoken.

The most notable distinguishing feature of the dialect is that the letters "o" and "u" are pronounced as centralized vowels ([ɵ] and [ʉ], which are also used in Swedish, for instance). Speakers of other German dialects that do not have these sounds tend to perceive these sounds as being "ö" [ø] and "ü" [y] respectively. For example, they hear [ʔæʉs] ‘out’ as if written "aüs" (Standard aus [ʔaʊs]) and [ˈʔɵːma] ‘grandma’ as if written "Öma" (Standard Oma [ˈʔoːma]). Front rounded vowels are pronounced as non-rounded ("ö" = [eː], "ü" = [iː]). Final -er is pronounced [ɝ], which speakers of other German dialects tend to hear as [oː]; e.g. [ˈheː(h)ɝ] ‘higher’ (Standard [ˈhøː(h)ɚ] höher) is misheard as if written "he(h)o."

For the Ore Mountain dialects (distinct from Upper Saxon), a little verse might illustrate the differences to High German:

Ore Mountains: Wu de Hasen Hosen haßen un de Hosen Husen haßen, do sei mer derham.
High German: Wo die Hasen Hosen heißen und die Hosen Husen heißen, da sind wir daheim.
English: Where the hares are called trousers and the trousers Husen, there is our home.

The Upper Saxon dialects outside the Ore Mountains can be easily recognized by the supposed “softening” of the voiceless stop consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/. Speakers of other dialects hear these as if they were "b," "d" and "g" respectively. In reality, these are merely non-aspirated versions of the same /p/, /t/ and /k/, a widespread feature among Central German dialects, as opposed to strongly aspirated [pʰ], [tʰ] and [kʰ] in dominant German dialects.