Erzgebirgisch

Erzgebirgisch (or "Aarzgebèèrgsch", pronounced|aːɰtskəpɛːɰjkʂ) is an Upper German dialect, probably belonging to the Franconian dialect group, spoken mainly in the central Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains). It has received relatively little academic attention as of today. Due to the high mobility of the population and the resulting contact with Upper Saxon, the high emigration rate and last, but not least, its low mutual intelligibility with other dialects, the number of speakers is decreasing.

Language area and history

As the following sections will show, Erzgebirgisch is very close to Bavarian. Presumably, speakers of Altbairisch settled down in the Erzgebirge about 1000 years ago.

As of today, the Erzgebirgisch area comprises roughly the districts of Mittweida (southern area), Stollberg, Central Ore Mountain District, Annaberg-Buchholz, Freiberg (South) and Aue-Schwarzenberg. Some more speakers live in the town of Lichtenstein, in the Chemnitzer Land district.

Another community live in the Upper Harz Mountains in the Clausthal-Zellerfeld region (Lower Saxony). Their ancestors were miners and emigrated in the 16th century.

Up to 1929, Erzgebirgisch was also spoken in other parts of Mittweida and Freiberg, in Chemnitz, Zwickau and in the extreme West of the Weißeritzkreis, but these areas are now dominated by Thuringian-Upper Saxonian dialects.

Until 1945, the bordering Sudetenland also harbored some Erzgebirgisch speakers, namely in Kaaden-Duppau, in whose dialect an anthology of words, proverbs and anecdotes was published (see references). After World War II these speakers had to leave Czechoslovakia and settled down all over the FRG and the GDR. This meant that dialect usage was reduced to the family homes, entailing a shift to the local varieties of their new home towns.

No official attempts to create an orthography have been made, nevertheless there are countless short stories, poems and songs written in Erzgebirgisch. The Sächsischer Heimatverein guidelines to writing in Erzgebirgisch were established in 1937, but are by and large not respected by the majority of authors. This means that linguistic analysis of this dialect has to be done in a field work setting with native speakers. An additional threat to Erzgebirgisch is the popular misconception that Erzgebirgisch is a hillbilly variety of Saxonian, which does not help the conservation efforts.

Erzgebirgisch is classified as an East Franconian dialect in the Linguasphere Register (Zone 52-ACB-dj), though scientific proof for this is lacking. East Franconian, Alemannisch and Bairisch belong to the Upper German area.

Many of these languages show a tendency to substitute the German verbal prefix "er-" by "der-" (Erzg. and Bair.) or "ver-" (Bair and Suabian). (e.g. westerzgeb. "derschloong" [IPA|tɔɰʃloːŋ] German ‚erschlagen‘, to slaughter "derzeeln" [IPA|tɔɰtseːln] German ‚erzählen‘ to tell, to narrate).

Extended use of the particle "fei" is typical for Upper German and popular in Erzgebirgisch.

Furthermore, German [IPA|o/ɔ] corresponds to [IPA|u/ʊ] in the mentioned varieties (e.g. westerzgeb. "huus" [IPA|huːs] ‚Hose‘), and German [IPA|a] corresponds to [IPA|A.

An [n] in the coda, following a long vowel, is regularly deleted in Erzgebirgisch (e.g. Lichtenst. "Huuschdee" [IPA|huːʂʈeː] ‚Hohenstein‘. Rarely, this is also found with monosyllabic words with a short vowel, which undergo compensatory vowel lengthening in the process (e.g. Lichtenst. "màà" [IPA|mʌː] ‚Mann‘ man).

Another typical feature of Upper German is the apocope of schwa and /IPA|ɪ/ (e.g. Lichtenst. "Reedlz" [IPA|ɣeːtˡl̩ts] ] ‚Rödlitz‘ )

The following table illustrates the similarities between Erzgebirgisch and the other Upper German dialects. We list Thuringian/Upper Saxon as a control parameter. An 'X' means that the feature is present in most subdialects, a 'x' means that it is only found in border areas.

No subdialect shows phonemic contrast between postalveolar ( [IPA|tʃ] , [IPA|ʃ] ) and retroflex ( [IPA|ʈʂ] , [IPA|ʂ] ), they either have one or the other but not both.

The distinction between [IPA|ʂ/ʃ] and [IPA|ç] is not found in the North Western dialect, which only has [IPA|ʂ] (although writers disagree on whether to render it as or .

An important sound change in Erzgebirgisch is found with respect to "r". When "r" precedes a velar consonant, a [j] is inserted between the two. As an example, "Baarg" (German "Berg" mountain) is pronounced [IPA|paːɰjk] . Since this phonological process is completely regular, it is not reflected in orthography.

The velar approximant ( [IPA|ɰ] ) is normally realized as a velarization of the preceding vowel. For the sake of legibility, this article will use [IPA|ɰ] though.

Vowels

The writing of the vowels presented here follows in part the official Schwyzertütsch orthography and the Bairisch orthography. The orthographic representation of a vowel follows after the IPA characters, if different.

Articles

Erzgebirgisch distinguishes three kinds of articles: emphatic definite article, atonal definite article, indefinite article. The emphatic definite articles are used where Standard German would use deictics like "dieser" and "jener". The other two types closely resemble their Standard German counterparts.

All articles agree in gender, number and case with their head noun. The emphatic articles may also occur without a head noun and often replace the rarely used third person personal pronouns.

Erzgebirgisch has a negative indefinite article just like German, but the similarity to the positive indefinite article is less obvious.

The North-Western dialect has the following forms:

Pronouns with "ch" have "sch" in the North Western dialect. The atonal second person singular pronoun is "de" when it precedes a verb, and "du " when following.There are extra pronouns to express politeness, unlike German, which uses third person plural for this function.

Examples:

singular pronouns lose the "n" before another "n" or a "-Ø"-suffix.

First person plural loses the "s" everywhere but in the North Western dialect. First and second person plural lose the "e" before a suffix starting with a vowel.

Third person pronouns make heavy use of the dative construction (see above), just like nouns.

The canonic preposition "n" (in) is never deleted in Lichtenstein, but almost always in the western dialects due to the more widespread dropping of "n".This leads to the impression that "nei" is the preposition. One should also notice that goal of motion is encoded by the dative, and not by the accusative as in Standard German. The motion component is expressed by "nei".This construction is also found with many other prepositions: "dràà der kèrch" („an der Kirche“, „bei der Kirche“ at the church).

Adjectives

Agreement

Adjectives agree with their head word in case, number, gender and definiteness. A difference to Standard German is the non-distinction of forms with indefinite article and forms without any article.

Verbs

The verb agrees in person and number with the subject of the sentence. This is true of both full verbs and auxiliaries.

Two tenses are morphologically distinguished, present tense and preterite tense. Usage of preterit is nearly exclusively found with "strong" verbs, i.e. verbs involving ablaut.

The other tenses are formed with auxiliaries: Perfect, Pluperfect, Futur I und Futur II. Perfect and preterite are used interchangeably.
Pluperfect expresses anteriority in the past. Futur II is mainly used for epistemic statements about past events (cf. German: "Er wird wohl wieder nicht da gewesen sein." He has probably not attended again.)

Infinitive and participles

The infinitive and the present participle and the past participle are formed with the following affixes:

Perfect, pluperfect

Perfect and pluperfect are construed with a finite form of the auxiliaries "sei-" and "hàb-" and the past participle of the full verb.

Examples:

Passive

The passive is formed with the auxiliary "wèèr-" (German werden) and the past participle of the full verb.

example:

Verbs

Erzgebirgisch has many onomatopoetic verbs (see also I. Susanka). Due to the high precipitation in the Ore Mountains, many different verbs for different kinds of rain or drizzle exist.

Other words

Like many other German dialects, Erzgebirgisch is rich in adverbs, like the notorious "fei", whose use is extremely complex and needs further research. It appears in commands ("Gii fei wag!", Go away!), but also in affirmations ("S´reengd fei", It's raining, by the way.).

Interjections

The interjections used in Erzgebirgisch differ considerably from the German ones. The language area being dominated by mining, some linguistic patterns peculiar to this business have attained general usage, like the salute "Glig auf!" (dt. „Glück auf“).

English does not have a specialized form to affirm negative questions, unlike French ("si"), Dutch ("jawel") or German ("doch"). Erzgebirgisch uses "Ujuu!" [IPA|ˈʊjuː] , or sometimes "Ajuu!" [IPA|ˈajuː] , (dt. „Doch!“) in these contexts.For the negation of a question expecting a positive answer "È(schà)!" [IPA|ˈɛ(ˌʂʌ)] (dt. „Nein!“) is used. This interjection is also used to express surprise, albeit with a different intonation.

References

Literature

Grammars and other linguistic publications

* Oswin Böttger: "Der Satzbau der erzgebirgischen Mundart". Leipzig 1904. - An analysis of the syntax.
* Erich Borchers: "Sprach- und Gründungsgeschichte der erzgebirgischen Kolonie im Oberharz". Marburg 1929. - Grammar of the Upper Harz variety.

Other literature

*Irmtraud Susanka: "Wie mir drham geredt homm. Unsere Mundart im Bezirke Kaaden-Duppau". Verlag des Kaadener Heimatbriefs, Bayreuth (no year, no ISBN). - Collection of words, phrases, poems and short stories of the southern variety formerly spoken in the Sudetenland.

External links

* [http://www.westerzgebirge.com/htm/erzgebirge-sprache.htm A western Erzg. wordlist and some further literature]
* [http://www.schluckauf-thalheim.de/mundart/mundart01.html A wordlist of the variety in Thalheim]
* [http://www.nanisternchen.de/erzgebirgisch.htm Some poems in Erzg.]
* [http://www.godemann.de/Regionales/Arzgebirg/arzgebirg.html Some short stories in Erzg.]