Duisburg dialect (german: Duisburger Platt, ; nl, Duisburgs, ;
Duisburg dialect: ''Düsbergsch Platt'') is an extinct dialect that was spoken in the German city of
Duisburg
Duisburg () is a city in the Ruhr metropolitan area of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Lying on the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr rivers in the center of the Rhine-Ruhr Region, Duisburg is the 5th largest city in Nor ...
. It was part of the broader
South Guelderish
South Guelderish ( nl, Zuid-Gelders , german: Südgeldersch, ''Kleverländisch'') refers to the easternmost group of Dutch dialects spoken along the lower Rhine (Dutch Nederrijn and German Niederrhein). In its narrower sense, the term refers str ...
(Cleverlands) dialect group – the easternmost of the
Low Franconian languages
Low Franconian, Low Frankish, NetherlandicSarah Grey Thomason, Terrence Kaufman: ''Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics'', University of California Press, 1991, p. 321. (Calling it "Low Frankish (or Netherlandish)".)Scott Shay ...
. These languages, including
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
, were spoken along the lower Rhine in the Netherlands and central western Germany. Through historical circumstances, Duisburg dialect – along with the other South Guelderish dialects – became more and more influenced by Standard German and, in particular, Central German dialects.
The dialect was located close to the northern side of the
Uerdingen line
The Uerdingen Line (german: Ürdinger Linie, Uerdinger Linie, nl, Uerdinger linie; named after Uerdingen by Georg Wenker) is the isogloss within West Germanic languages that separates dialects which preserve the ''-k'' sound in the first person ...
, a linguistic
isogloss
An isogloss, also called a heterogloss (see Etymology below), is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Major d ...
within the continental
West Germanic languages
The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic languages, Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic languages, North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages, East Germanic ...
in Europe, separating dialects that preserve the ''-k'' sound in the first person singular pronoun word "ik" (north of the line) from dialects in which the word final ''-k'' has changed to a final ''-ch'' in the word "ich" () (south of the line). That sound shift is the one that progressed the farthest north among the consonant shifts that characterize
High German
The High German dialects (german: hochdeutsche Mundarten), or simply High German (); not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called ''High German'', comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Benrath and ...
and
Low German
:
:
:
:
:
(70,000)
(30,000)
(8,000)
, familycolor = Indo-European
, fam2 = Germanic
, fam3 = West Germanic
, fam4 = North Sea Germanic
, ancestor = Old Saxon
, ancestor2 = Middle L ...
/
Low Saxon
Low Saxon, also known as West Low German ( nds, Nedersassisch, Nedersaksies; nl, Nedersaksisch) are a group of Low German dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and southern Denmark (in North Schleswig by parts of th ...
dialects. The line passes through Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
During the 20th century, a
Ruhr
The Ruhr ( ; german: Ruhrgebiet , also ''Ruhrpott'' ), also referred to as the Ruhr area, sometimes Ruhr district, Ruhr region, or Ruhr valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 2,800/km ...
/
Lower Rhine
The Lower Rhine (german: Niederrhein; kilometres 660 to 1,033 of the river Rhine) flows from Bonn, Germany, to the North Sea at Hook of Holland, Netherlands (including the Nederrijn or "Nether Rhine" within the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta); al ...
dialect, with traces of the old dialect in grammar, syntax and vocabulary gradually became dominant in the Duisburg region. The Duisburg dialect became extinct in spoken form, between the 1950s and 1970s.
Examples
Duisburg dialect:
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Dutch:
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English:
: Wellem van der Weppe was years old when he took a wife. He has always been
: a bit careful in all matters.
: "Now I am free and unmarried", he said when he was forty-five years old.
: "now I know what I have, but what I will get when I am saddled with a wife,
: that I do not know by far yet!"
German:
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Literature
* Georg Böllert: ''Ut Old Düsberg’s Tid'', Georg Böllert, Duisburg, 1934
* Heinrich Neuse: ''Studien zur niederheinischen Dialektgeographie in den Kreisen Rees, Dinslaken, Hamborn, Mülheim, Duisburg'' in: DDG 8, Marburg, Friedrich (1915)
See also
*
Ruhr Language ("Ruhrdeutsch")
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Duisburg dialect
Culture in Duisburg
Ruhr
German dialects
Dutch dialects
North Rhine-Westphalia
Languages of Germany
City colloquials
Languages extinct in the 20th century