Westphalian language

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Westphalian
Spoken in:	Germany^[1]
Region:	Northwestern, Westphalian^[1]
Total speakers:	unknown^[1]
Language family:	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Low Franconian Low Saxon^[1] Westphalian
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`gem [Germanic, other]`
ISO 639-3:	`wep`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Westphalian is one of the major dialect groups of West Low German. Its most salient feature is the diphthongization (rising diphthongs). For example, we get iEten instead of Eːten for eat. (There is also a difference in the use of consonants within the Westphalian dialects: North of the Wiehengebirge, people tend to speak hard consonants, south of the Wiehengebirge they speak soft consonants, e.g. Foite <-> Foide.) The Westphalian dialect region includes the north-eastern part of North Rhine-Westphalia, i.e. the former Prussian province of Westphalia excluding the Siegerland, and the region around Osnabrück.

It has many lexical similarities and other proximities with Eastphalian, extending to the East and a bit to the North of the area where Westphalian is spoken.