Ripuarian ( ; also ''Ripuarian Franconian''; german: Ripuarisch, , ''ripuarische Mundart, ripuarischer Dialekt, ripuarisch-fränkische Mundart, Ribuarisch'', nl, Ripuarisch , ''Noordmiddelfrankisch'') is a

German dialect German dialects are the various traditional local varieties of the German language. Though varied by region, those of the southern half of Germany beneath the Benrath line are dominated by the geographical spread of the High German consonant ...

group, part of the

West Central German West Central German (german: Westmitteldeutsch) belongs to the Central, High German dialect family of German. Its dialects are Franconian and comprise the parts of the Rhinelandic continuum located south of the Benrath line isogloss, including ...

language group. Together with the

Moselle Franconian __NOTOC__ Moselle Franconian (german: Moselfränkisch, lb, Muselfränkesch) is a West Central German language, part of the Central Franconian dialects, Central Franconian languages area, that includes Luxembourgish. It is spoken in the southe ...

which includes the

Luxembourgish language Luxembourgish ( ; also ''Luxemburgish'', ''Luxembourgian'', ''Letzebu(e)rgesch''; Luxembourgish: ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide. As a standard form of th ...

, Ripuarian belongs to the larger Central Franconian dialect family and also to the

Rhinelandic Rhinelandic is a term occasionally used for linguistic varieties of a region on both sides of the Middle and Lower Rhine river in Central West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. It has at least two distinct meanings which often ca ...

linguistic

continuum Continuum may refer to: * Continuum (measurement), theories or models that explain gradual transitions from one condition to another without abrupt changes Mathematics * Continuum (set theory), the real line or the corresponding cardinal number ...

with 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 ...

. It is spoken in the

Rhineland The Rhineland (german: Rheinland; french: Rhénanie; nl, Rijnland; ksh, Rhingland; Latinised name: ''Rhenania'') is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section. Term Historically, the Rhinelands ...

south of the Benrath line — from northwest of

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...

and

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

Aachen Aachen ( ; ; Aachen dialect: ''Oche'' ; French and traditional English: Aix-la-Chapelle; or ''Aquisgranum''; nl, Aken ; Polish: Akwizgran) is, with around 249,000 inhabitants, the 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the 28th- ...

in the west and to

Waldbröl Waldbröl is a town in the southern part of the Oberbergischer Kreis (upper Berg county), in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Geography Location The town is located on the slopes of the Nutscheid range of hills and is part of the Bergisches Land ...

in the east. The language area also comprises the north of the

German-speaking Community of Belgium The German-speaking Community (german: links=no, Deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft, or DG; french: links=no, Communauté germanophone; nl, links=no, Duitstalige Gemeenschap), since 2017 also known as East Belgium (german: links=no, Ostbelgien), is ...

as well as the southern edge of the

Limburg Limburg or Limbourg may refer to: Regions * Limburg (Belgium), a province since 1839 in the Flanders region of Belgium * Limburg (Netherlands), a province since 1839 in the south of the Netherlands * Diocese of Limburg, Roman Catholic Diocese in ...

province of the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, especially

Kerkrade Kerkrade ( Ripuarian: ; li, Kirkraoj; german: Kerkrade or ''Kirchrath'') is a town and a municipality in the southeast of Limburg; the southernmost province of the Netherlands. It forms part of the Parkstad Limburg agglomeration. Kerkrade is the ...

(''Kirchroa''), where it is perceived as a variety of

Limburgish Limburgish ( li, Limburgs or ; nl, Limburgs ; german: Limburgisch ; french: Limbourgeois ), also called Limburgan, Limburgian, or Limburgic, is a West Germanic language spoken in the Dutch and Belgian provinces of Limburg (Netherlands), L ...

and legally treated as such. The name derives from the

Ripuarian Franks Ripuarian or Rhineland Franks (Latin: ''Ripuarii'' or ''Ribuarii'') were one of the two main groupings of early Frankish people, and specifically it was the name eventually applied to the tribes who settled in the old Roman territory of the Ubii, ...

(''Rheinfranken''), who settled in the area from the 4th century onward. The most well known Ripuarian dialect is '' Kölsch'', the local dialect of

. Dialects belonging to the Ripuarian group almost always call themselves ''Platt'' (spelled in the Netherlands) like ''

Öcher Platt Southeast Limburgish (Dutch: ''Zuidoost-Limburgs'', Ripuarian: ''Süüdoß-Limburjesch''), also referred to as Southern Meuse-Rhenish, is a subdivision of what recently has been named Meuse-Rhenish. Both terms denote a rather compact grouping of ...

'' (of

), '' Bönnsch Platt'' (of

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

), ''Eischwiele Platt'' (of

Eschweiler Eschweiler (, Ripuarian: ) is a municipality in the district of Aachen in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany on the river Inde, near the German-Belgian-Dutch border, and about east of Aachen and west of Cologne. History * Celts (fi ...

), '' Kirchröadsj plat'' (of

), or '' Bocheser plat'' (of

Bocholtz Bocholtz (; Ripuarian: is a town in the Dutch province of Limburg. It is a part of the municipality of Simpelveld, and lies about 7 km southwest of Kerkrade. Until 1982, it was a separate municipality. History Bocholtz dates back to th ...

). Most of the more than one hundred Ripuarian dialects are bound to one specific village or municipality. Usually there are small distinctive differences between neighbouring dialects (which are, however, easily noticeable to locals), and increasingly bigger differences between the more distant dialects. These are described by a set of

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 ...

es called the

Rhenish fan The subdivision of West Central German into a series of dialects, according to the differing extent of the High German consonant shift, is particularly pronounced. It known as the Rhenish fan (german: Rheinischer Fächer, links=no, nl, Rijnlandse ...

in linguistics. The way people talk, even if they are not using Ripuarian, often allows them to be traced precisely to a village or city quarter where they learned to speak.

Number of speakers

About a million people speak a variation of Ripuarian dialect, which constitutes about one quarter of the inhabitants of the area. Penetration of Ripuarian in everyday communication varies considerably, as does the percentage of Ripuarian speakers from one place to another. In some places there may only be a few elderly speakers left, while elsewhere Ripuarian usage is common in everyday life. Both in the genuine Ripuarian area and far around it, the number of people passively understanding Ripuarian to some extent exceeds the number of active speakers by far. Estimates assume some ten, and up to twenty million speakers.

Geographic significance

Speakers are centred on the German city of Köln (

). The language's distribution starts from the important geographic transition into the flat-lands coming down from the

Middle Rhine Between Bingen and Bonn, Germany, the river Rhine flows as the Middle Rhine (german: Mittelrhein) through the Rhine Gorge, a formation created by erosion, which happened at about the same rate as an uplift in the region, leaving the river a ...

. The Ripuarian varieties are related to the

languages spoken in the southern Rhineland (

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...

and

Saarland The Saarland (, ; french: Sarre ) is a state of Germany in the south west of the country. With an area of and population of 990,509 in 2018, it is the smallest German state in area apart from the city-states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg, and ...

) in Germany, to the

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

, to the Low Franconian

language in the Dutch province of

, and to

Low Dietsch Low Dietsch ( nl, Platdiets, li, Platduutsj, french: francique rhéno-mosan or ) refers to a handful of transitional Limburgish– Ripuarian dialects spoken in a number of towns and villages (e.g., Gemmenich, Hombourg, Montzen, Welkenraedt). T ...

Liège Province Liège (; wa, Lîdje ; nl, Luik ; german: Lüttich ) is the easternmost province of the Wallonia region of Belgium. Liège Province is the only Belgian province that has borders with three countries. It borders (clockwise from the north) the Du ...

, Belgium. Most of the historic roots of Ripuarian languages are in Middle German, but there were other influences too, such as

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

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 ...

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 ...

, French and

Southern Meuse-Rhenish Southeast Limburgish (Dutch: ''Zuidoost-Limburgs'', Ripuarian: ''Süüdoß-Limburjesch''), also referred to as Southern Meuse-Rhenish, is a subdivision of what recently has been named Meuse-Rhenish. Both terms denote a rather compact grouping of ...

(

). Several elements of grammar are unique to Ripuarian and do not exist in the other

languages of Germany The official language of Germany is German, with over 95 percent of the country speaking Standard German or a dialect of German as their first language. This figure includes speakers of Northern Low Saxon, a recognized minority or regional lang ...

. The French Community of Belgium and the Netherlands officially recognise some Ripuarian dialects as

minority language A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 196 sovereign states recognized internationally (as of 2019) and ...

s, and the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

likewise follows.

Grammar

Numerals

The transcription from Münch,''Grammatik der ripuarisch-fränkischen Mundart von Ferdinand Münch.'' Bonn, 1904, p. 8ff. & p. 159f.
Some symbols with their IPA equivalent are: * ę - �* š - ��ʃ⁠* ꝛ - ⁠ �⁠* χ - �* x - ��x⁠ in which the

grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...

(`) and macron (¯) represent, respectively, accent 1 and 2 in the Franconian

pitch accent A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ( ...

Pronouns

Ripuarian (excluding City-

Colognian Colognian or Kölsch (; natively ''Kölsch Platt'') is a small set of very closely related dialects, or variants, of the Ripuarian group of dialects of the Central German group. These dialects are spoken in the area covered by the Archdiocese ...

) emphasised personal pronouns:

Literature

* Maria Loiuse Denst: Olper Platt - Bergisches Mundart-Wörterbuch für Kürten-Olpe und Umgebung. Schriftenreihe des Bergischen Geschichtsvereins Abt. Rhein-Berg e. V. Band 29. Bergisch Gladbach 1999. * Hans Bruchhausen und Heinz Feldhoff: Us Platt kalle un verstonn - Mundartwörterbuch Lützenkirchen-Quettingen. Bergisch Gladbach 2005. * Leo Lammert und Paul Schmidt: Neunkirchen-Seelscheider Sprachschatz, herausgegeben vom Heimat- und Geschichtsverein Neunkirchen-Seelscheid 2006. (ca. 7300 Wörter) * Theodor Branscheid (Hrsg): „Oberbergische Sprachproben. Mundartliches aus Eckenhagen und Nachbarschaft.“ Band 1, Eckenhagen, 1927. * Heinrichs, Werner: Bergisch Platt - Versuch einer Bestandsaufnahme, Selbstverlag, Burscheid, 1978 * Manfred Konrads: Wörter und Sachen im Wildenburger Ländchen, Rheinland-Verlag, Köln, 1981 * Helmut Fischer: 'Wörterbuch der unteren Sieg. Rheinische Mundarten. Beiträge zur Volkssprache aus den rheinischen Landschaften Band 4. Rheinland Verlag, Köln, 1985. *

Georg Wenker Georg Wenker (January 25, 1852 – July 17, 1911) was a German linguist who began documenting German dialect geography during the late nineteenth century. He is considered a pioneer in this field and contributed several groundbreaking publica ...

: ''Das rheinische Platt''. 1877. * Georg Wenker: ''Das rheinische Platt'', (Sammlung deutsche Dialektgeographie Heft 8), Marburg, 1915. * Georg Cornelissen,

Peter Honnen Peter Honnen (born 1954) is a German linguist and specialist researcher of the languages of the Rhineland. He was born in Rheinhausen, Germany. For years he worked as a scientific staff member at the section for language research of the Insti ...

, Fritz Langensiepen (editor): ''Das rheinische Platt''. Eine Bestandsaufnahme. Handbuch der rheinischen Mundarten Teil 1: Texte. Rheinland-Verlag, Köln. 1989.

References

{{Authority control West Germanic languages Central German languages German dialects Languages of Germany Languages of Belgium Languages of the Netherlands North Rhine-Westphalia Subject–object–verb languages Verb-second languages Articles with citation needed in ref field