Lower Alemannic

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Lower Alemannic

Spoken in

Baden-Wuerttemberg , Alsace , Basel-Stadt , Vorarlberg , Allgäu
Linguistic
classification

The low Alemannische is a dialect group of Alemannic and thus belongs to the upper Germans .

definition

Lower Alemannic in the traditional sense is differentiated from Swabian in that Middle High German / uː / has been preserved and has not become / ou / (or / au /) (e.g. / huːs / 'house'), and it is different from High Alemannic themselves by anlautendes germanisches / ⁠ k ⁠ / as [ K ] or [ k ] and not as a fricative [⁠ x ⁠] is realized (z. B. / child /, / kxind / Child ').

The traditional distribution area of ​​West Upper German (= Alemannic) dialect features in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Lower Alemannic dialect indicators are formed by the Upper Rhine and the Bodensee Alemannic dialect features.

Conceptual criticism

Western and Eastern Lower Alemannic have little in common apart from those mentioned in the definition: The language of the Upper Rhine is shaped by southern Franconian influences, that of Lake Constance and the Alpine Rhine by Swabian . Hugo Steger and Karlheinz Jakob have therefore divided the traditional Lower Alemannic into the two groups, Upper Rhine-Alemannic and Lake Constance- Alemannic, listed above . With "Oberrheinalemannisch" they take up Friedrich Maurer's "Oberrheinisch" again, whose three-way division of Alemannic into Swabian, Upper Rhine and South Alemannic knew no Lower Alemannic. Even Peter Wiesinger is, based on the structuralist examination of the vocal systems, the traditional Low Alemannic German on; he only mentions its western part Lower Alemannic (= Steger / Jakobs Oberrheinalemannisch) and the eastern part Middle Alemannic (= Steger / Jakobs Bodensee Alemannic), whereby he outlines broad transitional areas to the neighboring dialects, especially to the High Alemannic. Wiesinger's terminology has the advantage over that of Steger / Jakob that with “Low” and “Middle Alemannic” it has created a conceptual counterpart to “High” and “Highest Alemannic”.

Classification

Lower Alemannic (in the traditional sense) is divided into the two subgroups Bodensee-Alemannic or Middle Alemannic and Upper Rhine-Alemannic or Lower Alemannic in the narrower sense :

Lake Constance alemannic

Upper Rhine Manish

Support from the population

Today, Lower Alemannic is under pressure from two sides, namely, on the one hand, from the neighboring dialects and, on the other hand, from the standard language or from large-scale regional lects.

Since about the end of the 19th century, but especially since 1945, Lower Alemannic in Germany has been increasingly influenced by neighboring Swabian and, in Allgau, by Bavarian and gradually replaced by these or by forms closer to High German. In Upper Swabia, for example, Swabian language spread to Lake Constance in the course of the 20th century, after the dialect border was previously between Bad Waldsee and Ravensburg . In Alsace , Lower Alemannic is being replaced by French , which is the only official language and increasingly also the lingua franca, and in Basel, Switzerland, it is transformed in the direction of High Alemannic to the southwest. The Vorarlberg dialects , which can be assigned to Lower Alemannic, are comparatively resistant .

In addition, the regional Alemannic self-image suffers due to the view of Lower Alemannic as a kind of minority - or even outsider language, which is inferior to the High German language and the surrounding dialects. In recent times, however, there have been a few teachers and other voices who are calling for the local dialect to be preserved in Lower Alemannic and thus also advocating a multilingual culture. In Alsace, on the other hand, the dialect is hardly passed on to the younger generation, which means that this area is transitioning to the French-speaking area.

Web links

Wikipedia in Alemannic (including Lower Alemannic)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hugo Steger, Karlheinz Jakob: spatial organization of the dialects. Preliminary studies on language continuity in the German-speaking area in the German south-west. Stuttgart 1983 (work on the Historical Atlas of Southwest Germany 7).
  2. ↑ Friedrich Maurer: New Research on Southwest German Language History. In: Preliminary work and studies to deepen the history of the South West German language, ed. by Friedrich Maurer, Stuttgart 1965 (Publications of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg B. 33), pp. 1-46.
  3. ↑ Peter Wiesinger: The division of the German dialects. In: Werner Besch u. a., dialectology. A manual on German and general dialectogy. Berlin / New York 1983 (HSK 1), pp. 807-900.