Continental West Germanic dialect continuum

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Continental West Germanic dialects.
The areas of the Frisian language marked in pink are bilingual: Dutch dialects are also spoken in area 1 and German dialects are also spoken in areas 2 and 3.

The term continental West Germanic dialect continuum called a former inner-west Germanic dialect continuum in Central and Western Europe , which the there spoken in a contiguous area of Upper German , Middle German , Low German , West Frisian and Low Franconian dialects included, now the standard and as official languages functioning roof languages German , Dutch , Frisian and Luxembourgish can be assigned. The increasing level of education of large parts of the population in the 19th century and the associated spread and use of standard languages ​​in all classes of the population split the dialect continuum, which today is only partially preserved and in various stages of decline.

Limitation

The dialect continuum is limited to the north by Danish , to the east by Polish , Czech and Slovak , to the south-east by Hungarian and Slovenian , to the south by Italian and Rhaeto-Romanic, and to the south-west and west by French . Frequently at these borders are places where both German or Dutch dialects and dialects of these languages ​​are spoken. Such a diglossia also exists in the language areas of North Frisian , East Frisian and the two Sorbian languages , which all belong to the German-speaking area and therefore do not interrupt the dialect continuum.

description

The continental West Germanic dialect continuum extends from Schleswig (North Lower Saxony ) in the extreme north to Höchst Alemannic in the extreme southwest and South Bavarian in the extreme southeast, from West Flanders in the extreme west to the German-Polish or German-Czech language border in the east.

Typically, dialect speakers can understand the dialects of their close neighbors. The small differences from one local dialect to the next add up and ultimately lead to the fact that a dialect speaker from Flensburg would not understand the dialect speaker from Bern or Bolzano, or only with difficulty - and vice versa, neither of them had German as a common national standard language . For dialect speakers from Antwerp (scope of the Dutch standard language) and Vienna (scope of the German standard language), there is no common umbrella or standard language that could directly contribute to overcoming communication problems. The German-Dutch dialect continuum extends over the current areas of application of two standard languages ​​- that of German in Germany, East Belgium, German-speaking Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein and South Tyrol in Italy and that of Dutch in the Netherlands and Northern Belgium . There are also the Alemannic , Rhenish Franconian and Moselle Franconian dialect areas in Alsace and northeastern Lorraine as well as the West Flemish dialect area around Dunkirk , where French is the official language and the standard Dutch language is only used to a limited extent, as well as the Moselle Franconian dialect area in Luxembourg , where the standard German language is also used Luxembourgish fulfills some functions of a standard language. The boundaries of the dialect groups do not coincide with the distribution areas of the two major standard languages, which are largely determined by the political boundaries. Lower Saxony, Lower Franconian and Ripuarian are spoken on both sides of the German-Dutch state border, which separates the areas of distribution of the standard languages.

The Germanist Jan Goossens described that the Dutch dialects became more and more German the closer they got to the southeastern border. Likewise, German dialects would become more and more Dutch if they moved in a north-westerly direction and approached the Dutch state border. Therefore, “East Sassian” dialects, which are spoken in parts of the provinces of Gelderland ( Achterhoek ) and Overijssel ( Twente ), mostly showed linguistic characteristics of the neighboring Westphalian Low German . Meanwhile, the "West Sassian dialects" would already have a lot in common with the dialects spoken in Holland or Brabant.

However, until the 19th century, both Dutch and German were pure book languages ​​among the rural population (according to the script, only a few of them spoke), the everyday language was traditionally the respective dialect. This is how the peasants, but also the townspeople from Germany - if they did not speak the Dutch language - spoke to their Dutch neighbors on Platt. For example, the Germanist Peter von Polenz writes :

“In the 18th century there was still a lot of liberality in the coexistence and overlap of different languages. With the continuation of the basic Low German language in oral communication, the written languages ​​High German and Dutch were used alternately depending on the recipient (district) and subject domain, even in the upper Gelderland, with both churches also supporting Dutch against Prussian condemnation of German in church services and schools. […] [B] is finally around 1860 the written language borders exactly the state borders. [...] The Rhine-Maaslanders have become Belgians, Germans and Dutch whose memories of the 1,500-year-old common language and history have faded. "

- Peter von Polenz: "German language history from the late Middle Ages to the present", Vol. III: 19th and 20th centuries, p. 121.

Within comparative linguistics ( Germanistik / Nederlandistik ) it is controversial to what extent the dialect continuum, which was intact until the 1960s, at the German-Dutch state border has dissolved as a result of the influence of the respective cultural languages German and Dutch . Until the Second World War , it was quite possible for the border population on both sides of the border to communicate verbally with each other in dialect.

After 1945, especially since the 1960s, there is a tendency to be observed how the respective dialects align and orientate themselves to the corresponding high and standard language (supported by radio , television , etc.), so that the border population is no longer without major difficulties in the respective dialect can communicate with each other. A related Dutch study, as part of a dissertation from 2008, of the cross-border Kleverland dialect area came to the conclusion that the dialects on both sides of the state border, insofar as they still exist, diverged under the increasing influence of the respective umbrella languages ​​and in the (Kleverland) dialect area have also led to a dialectal language boundary. Today only a minority of German scholars take the view that the dialect continuum on the German-Dutch state border continues to exist across borders, while Jan Goossens established as early as 1970 that the German-Dutch state border was de facto the dialect border between Dutch and German dialects.

A similar development to that of Dutch took place in Luxembourg and German-speaking Switzerland as early as the 1930s . There, after the National Socialist seizure of power  (1933), the respective dialects were expanded as part of the national self-discovery of the Luxembourgers and German-speaking Swiss. In Luxembourg, this has been one of the official working languages ​​since 1980 and the national language of the autochthonous Germanic population. In Switzerland and Luxembourg, some now perceive Standard German as a foreign language .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Jan Goossens: Deutsche Dialektologie , chapter “Deutsche Dialektologie”, Walter de Gruyter 1977 (Göschen Collection), ISBN 3-11-007203-3 , p. 48.
  2. ^ A b Jan Goossens: Dutch dialects - seen from the German , in: Niederdeutsches Wort. Small contributions to the Low German dialect and name studies , Vol. 10, Verlag Aschendorf, Münster 1970, p. 78.
  3. ↑ C. Hoppenbrouwers & G. Hoppenbrouwers: De indeling van de Nederlandse streektalen: dialecten van 156 steden en dorpen geklasseerd volgens de FFM, Uitgeverij Van Gorcum, Assen, 2001, pp. 56-60.
  4. ↑ C. Giesbers (2008), p. 187.
  5. ↑ Halyna Leontiy: Multicultural Germany in a Language Comparison: German in the Focus of the Most Common Migrant Languages , Googlebooks, p. 28, accessed on November 15, 2018
  6. ↑ Britta Weimann: Diversity of Languages ​​- Variance of Perspectives: On the Past and Present of the Luxembourg Present , p. 258, Googlebooks, accessed on November 28, 2018
  7. ↑ Heinz Drügh, Susanne Komfort-Hein, Andreas Kraß, Cécile Meier, Gabriele Rohowski, Robert Seidel, Helmut Weiss (eds.): German Studies: Linguistics - Literary Studies - Key Competencies , Googlebooks, entry "Westgermanisch", p. 126, accessed on 15 November 2018
  8. ↑ Ralf Pörings, Ulrich Schmitz (Ed.): Language and Linguistics: A Cognitively Oriented Introduction , Googlebooks, p. 247
  9. ↑ Jan Goossens: Dutch dialects - seen from the German , in: Low German word. Small contributions to the Low German dialect and name studies , Vol. 10, Verlag Aschendorf Münster 1970, p. 63