Palatine German language

Palatine German or Pfaelzisch (Pälzisch; German: Pfälzisch) is a West Franconian dialect of German which is spoken in the Upper Rhine Valley roughly in an area between the cities of Zweibrücken, Kaiserslautern, Alzey, Worms, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Speyer, Landau, Wörth am Rhein and the border to the Alsace region in France but also beyond. Pennsylvania German, or Pennsylvania Dutch is descended primarily from the Palatine German dialects spoken by Germans who immigrated to North America from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries and who chose to maintain their native language. Danube Swabians in Croatia and Serbia also use many elements of it. Normally, one distinguishes the Pfälzisch spoken in the western part of the Palatinate (Westpfälzisch) and the Pfälzisch spoken in the eastern part of the Palatinate (Vorderpfälzisch). Some examples of the differences between High German and Pfälzisch are:

A few examples of sentence pronunciation in Vorderpfälzisch would be:

Isch habb's'm schunn vazehlt, awwa där hod ma's nit geglaabt.

In Westpfälzisch:

Ich hann's'm schunn verzehlt, awwer er had mer's net geglaabt.

In standard German, the sentence would read as such:

Ich hab's ihm schon erzählt, aber er hat's mir nicht geglaubt.

The English translation would be,

I have already told [it] him, but he didn't believe me.

Hasche aa Hunger? (Westpfälzisch)

Hoschd ach Hunga? (Vorderpfälzisch)

In standard German, the sentence would read as such:

Hast du auch Hunger?

The English translation would be,

Are you hungry too?

Pronunciation and grammar vary from region to region (even from town to town). Palatine Germans often can tell the part of Palatinate or even the village where other speakers are from. Something all Palatine dialects have in common is that the genitive is not used, similar to the German imperfect, except for words such as soi (to be) and wolle (to want).

References

External links

Palatine German edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Modern German Dialects: Pfälzisch

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Palatinate German.