Panninger line
The Panninger line is an isogloss in the area of the Dutch - Limburg dialects within the continental West Germanic dialect continuum . The majority of the Dutch-Limburg dialects are within the greater area, but not the city dialects of Maastricht and Venlo .
Main line
It is characteristic of the dialects in the east and south of the line that the pronunciation of the consonant pairs “sp”, “st”, “sl”, “sm”, “sn” and “sw” at the beginning of a word is the same as in the German language . Southeast in all dialects in Limburg in the east and the dialects of this line is "s" to "sj", similar to the German Trigraphs "sh", phonetic transcription : [ ʃ ] . “Stein” is thus “Sjtein” and “Swalmen” becomes “Zjwame” ( Stein and Swalmen are places in Limburg).
A detailed explanation of the line in the German-speaking area can be found under the topic Benrath Line .
By far most of the central and southern Limburg parts of the province have certain characteristics that enable them to be assigned to the more southern language group. Panningen is located southeast of the Panninger line. The village in the municipality of Helden is centrally located between the cities of Roermond , Weert and Venlo . The city of Venlo is north of the line, the country Weert is completely outside. From Susteren and in the southern part of the Dutch province of Limburg, almost the entire area has the dialect feature mentioned above . Here part of the Meuse and the Julianakanal form a section of the western border of the Isogloss. In Dutch Limburg, only two narrow strips south of Susteren fall under the language area of Maastricht (with Eijsden, Moelingen, Borgharen and Itteren) and one a little further north of Stein (in Meers). From a linguistic point of view, these two small regions along the Meuse belong more to Belgian Limburg, to the east of the Meuse they clearly belong to Dutch Limburg. The Panninger Line is of cultural importance for the unity and self-image of the eastern Dutch province of Limburg . It describes the boundary of a primary cultural feature Dutch Limburg, Maastricht and Venlo, on the other hand, do not play a major role in this context due to their own regional lects.
Sideline
To the west of the Panninger line runs the Panninger Seitenlinie , Dutch Panninger zijlinie , which begins southwest of Tongeren in Belgium and continues from there in a northerly direction. Here are Hasselt (west of the line) and Genk (east of the line) happens. At the Dutch border, the Isogloss bends in an easterly direction, leaving the villages of Ell and Leveroij between it and the main line. Turning again to the north, it turns west-northwest of Panningen one last time to the east and unites with the Panninger line not far from the place that gives it its name.
In the area to the west or north of the Panninger sideline, “Schatz” becomes the standard Dutch “schat”, with the “s” being separated from the “ch”. Eastern and southern one says in the dialect "sjat", the "sj" in turn corresponds to the high German "sch".