Gottscheerish,[1][2] also called Granish[3] (Göttscheabarisch,[4] German: Gottscheerisch) is a German dialect which was the main language of communication in Gottschee County in Slovenia before 1941. Today there are only a few speakers left in Slovenia and around the world.
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Gottscheerish belongs to Southern Bavarian within the Bavarian dialect group. The Bavarian dialects of Carinthia are closest to it. Gottscheerish shares a lot of properties with the Bavarian dialects of the German language islands of the eastern Alps, among them Cimbrian in Veneto, Sappada (Pladen) and Timau (Tischelwang) in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and Sorica (Zarz) in Upper Carniola (Slovenia).
Gottscheerish developed independently for more than 600 years from the settlement of the first German-speaking settlers from Eastern Tyrol and Western Carinthia around 1330.
The Gottscheer Germans used Gottscheerish as oral language for daily communication, whereas their written language was Standard German. However, folk songs and folk tales collected in the 19th and 20th century have been published in Gottscheerish.
Already in the 19th century many speakers of Gottscheerish left their homes to emigrate to the United States of America. After resettlement of most Gottscheers by the German occupation forces in 1941 during the Second World War only a few hundred speakers of Gottscheerish remained in their homeland. After the war Gottscheerish was forbidden in Yugoslavia.
According to the UNESCO, Gottscheerish is a "critically endangered language". The majority of its speakers live in the USA. Most of them are of the oldest generation, who lived their childhood still in Gottschee County.[3] There are speakers in Canada, Austria and Germany as well, but just as in the USA they have hardly any opportunity to practice it. Everyday language in the family and elsewhere is English and German or the local dialect, respectively.[5]
In Slovenia there are some families who preserved Gottscheerish in spite of the ban after Word War II. Today, however, there are probably no more children learning it as first language. Most Gottscheerish speakers live in Moschnitze valley (Črmošnjiško-Poljanska dolina) between Kočevske Poljane and Črmošnjice, where some Gottscheer families collaborated with the partisan movement and therefore were allowed to stay.[6][4] The Society of the Gottscheers Native Inhabitants (Društvo Kočevarjev staroselcev / Gottscheer Altsiedlerverein) in Občice offers language courses in Standard German and Gottscheerish, but interest in Standard German is significantly higher.[5]
