Middle Alemannic

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Middle Alemannic is a linguistic technical term that usually designates a certain group of Alemannic dialects , but rarely also stands for a temporal limitation in the context of the development of the Alemannic dialects as a whole.

Middle Alemannic in the linguistic-geographical sense

In saying geographical (areal linguistic) sense of the term is mittelalemannisch used for those Alemannic dialects between the high-Alemannic dialect space (especially Central Plateau) and the Swabian dialect room are. It is a dialect continuum that cannot always be clearly assigned to southern or northern Alemannic. Including the interference areas, according to Peter Wiesinger, it includes north-east Switzerland, the Chur Rhine Valley, Liechtenstein, Vorarlberg, the southern Baden Hegau, the uppermost Danube and south-eastern Black Forest, the northern Lake Constance area and the upper Allgäu. Northeastern Switzerland, southern Hegau, southern Liechtenstein and southern Vorarlberg are more closely related to southern and high Alemannic, the other areas more to northern Alemannic and Swabian.

The core of Middle Alemannic, that is, the language area north and (south) east of Lake Constance outside the High Alemannic-Middle Alemannic interference area, is also called Lake Constance Alemannic.

Middle Alemannic in the chronological sense

In a chronological (temporal) sense, according to a suggestion by Stefan Sonderegger, the Alemannic dialects spoken around the 11th to 14th centuries are called Middle Alemannic . In this meaning, the expression is modeled on the term Middle High German and refers to the popular language prevailing in the Alemannic area at that time.

The parallelization to the all-German use of “Middle High German” suffers from the fact that it is primarily based on the implementation of the office language , whereas the dialects of the spoken language at that time, which had to be described by the term “Middle Alemannic”, were already clearly differentiated in terms of area linguistics. So the languages spoken in the Grisons and Vorarlberg show Walser dialects numerous matches to the Walliser German , suggesting that the latter the tangible in many ways still in the 20th century language development in the 13th century, that is the time when the Walser left the Valais, had trained. Similar findings can be made from sources close to the spoken language of the other Alemannic dialect areas, although the research situation, with the exception of Basel (thanks in part to the studies by Ernst Erhard Müller ), is currently still very insufficient.

Remarks

  1. ↑ 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, esp. 836 and maps 47.4 and 47.5.
  2. ↑ Cf. on this Hugo Steger, Karlheinz Jakob: Raumgliederung der Mundarten. 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).
  3. ^ Stefan Sonderegger: Early New High German in Switzerland. Attempt to determine your position. In: Mattheier, K. J. (Ed.): Diversity of German. Festschrift for Werner Besch. Frankfurt a. M. 1993, pp. 11-58.
  4. ↑ See the language maps of the language atlas of German-speaking Switzerland .