Chemnitz dialect

Chemnitz dialect is a distinct German dialect of the city of Chemnitz and an urban variety of Vorerzgebirgisch, a variant of Upper Saxon German.

Phonology

Consonants

* are bilabial, whereas are labiodental.
* are dental .
** is alveolar after .
* are velar, are uvular, and is palatal. do not constitute a voiceless-voiced pair.
**The contrast is restricted to the word-initial position. In many cases, it corresponds to the contrast in Standard German.
** occurs only in onsets, and it has a few possible pronunciations, which are in free variation with one another:
***Voiced uvular approximant ;
***Voiced or voiceless lenis uvular fricative;
***Voiceless uvular trill ;
***Voiceless lenis uvular stop .
* may be voiced between sonorants.
**Word-final are sometimes voiced to .
**Word-initially, the contrast is neutralized before , which means that e.g. the word ''Kleid'' ('dress') can be pronounced as either or .
*When a stop or fricative precedes, the sequences can be realized as syllabic consonants . The nasals appear depending on the place of articulation of the preceding consonant, so that it can be bilabial , dental , velar or uvular .
*When another nasal precedes a syllabic nasal, such sequence is realized as a single consonant of variable length.
*Non-phonemic glottal stop is inserted in two cases:
**Before word-initial vowels, even the unstressed ones.
**Before stressed syllable-initial vowels within words.

Vowels

* The pharyngealized vowels correspond to the sequences of vowel + in the standard language.
* The non-native vowels are occasionally used in cognates of some Standard German words, such as ''brüder'' ('brothers'). In other cases, they are pronounced the same as .
* Unstressed short oral monophthongs may fall together as .
* are often diphthongal in careful speech. Monophthongal realizations are optionally shortened in certain positions.
* corresponds to Standard German .
* Monophthongs are somewhat retracted when they precede dorsals, except . The retraction is strongest before . To a certain extent, this is also true of monophthongs that follow dorsal consonants.
* Monophthongs are allophonically pharyngealized if a vowel in the following syllable is pharyngealized.
* The phonetic quality of the monophthongs is as follows:
** are close to the canonical values of the corresponding IPA symbols .
** is close-mid .
** are more central than the canonical values of the corresponding IPA symbols: .
** is mid .
** is mid near-back .
** are central .
** is near-open near-front .

* The starting point of is higher and more front than the canonical value of the corresponding IPA symbol ().
* The starting points of and are higher and more central than the canonical value of the corresponding IPA symbol ().
* The ending points of Chemnitz German diphthongs are close to the canonical values of the corresponding IPA symbols ().

Sample

The sample text is a reading of the first sentence of The North Wind and the Sun.

Broad phonetic transcription

Orthographic version (standard German)

References

Bibliography

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Central German languages
Chemnitz
German dialects
Languages of Germany
City colloquials