The Sittard dialect ( nl, Sittards, li, Zittesj, german: Selfkanter Platt, in reference to the variety used in Germany) is a

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 ...

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...

spoken mainly in the Dutch city of

Sittard Sittard (; ) is a city in the Netherlands, situated in the southernmost province of Limburg. The town is part of the municipality of Sittard-Geleen and has almost 37.500 inhabitants in 2016. In its east, Sittard borders the German municipali ...

. It is also spoken in

Koningsbosch Koningsbosch (, li, De Boesj ) is a village within the municipality of Echt-Susteren, in the Dutch province of Limburg. Koningsbosch is located next to the German border, approximately 10 kilometres east of the town of Echt. The neighbourhood o ...

and in a small part of

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

(

Selfkant Selfkant (; nl, Selfkant or ''Zelfkant'' ; Limburgish: ) is a municipality in the Heinsberg district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the most westerly municipality in Germany. Geography Isenbruch in Selfkant is the most westerly po ...

), but quickly becoming

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

there. Of all other important Limburgish dialects, the dialect of Sittard is most closely related to that of the .

Characteristics

The Sittard dialect belongs to , which means it has a

postalveolar consonant Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but no ...

at the

onset Onset may refer to: *Onset (audio), the beginning of a musical note or sound *Onset, Massachusetts, village in the United States **Onset Island (Massachusetts), a small island located at the western end of the Cape Cod Canal *Interonset interval, ...

of words beginning with clusters such as ''sl'' and ''st'', in contrast with other variants of Limburgish such as

Maastrichtian The Maastrichtian () is, in the ICS geologic timescale, the latest age (uppermost stage) of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series, the Cretaceous Period or System, and of the Mesozoic Era or Erathem. It spanned the interval from ...

and in

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 ...

. The most important characteristic which distinguishes the dialect of Sittard from adjacent Limburgish dialects is the so-called Sittard diphthongization, i.e. the replacement of the close-mid monophthongs , and with the wide

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...

s , and in some words such as ''neit'' ("not", originally ''neet'' ), ''zuike'' ("to search", originally ''zeuke'' ) and ''bloud'' ("blood", originally ''blood'' ). It resembles the

Polder Dutch Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives German and English. ''Afrikaans'' i ...

phenomenon in Standard Dutch, though it is extended to the environment before (where an epenthetic schwa is inserted before the consonant), as in ''beier'' ("beer"). This phenomenon was first examined thoroughly in the first half of the 1940s by

Willy Dols Willy Dols (Sittard, 21 March 1911 – Schwesing, 5 November 1944) was a Dutch linguist, dialectologist and phonologist. He was the first one to make a profound study of the diphthongization which is typical for the Sittard dialect, in his dissert ...

, who showed that this Sittard diphthongization typically occurred in

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

s with a push tone. New research at the beginning of the 21st century has shown that the diphthongization once served to emphasize the difference in

vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...

which distinguishes syllables with a push tone from those with a dragging tone.

Phonology

Vowels

* is restricted to unstressed syllables.

Consonants

Pitch accent

As many other Limburgish dialects, the Sittard dialect features a contrastive

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 ( ...

, with minimal pairs such as ''goud'' 'gold' (featuring the push tone) vs. ''goud'' 'good' (featuring the dragging tone, transcribed as a high tone). The push tone is realized as a rising-falling contour in the declarative pattern, whereas the dragging tone varies between rising (when the sentence focus falls on the syllable that is non-final) and a shallow rising-falling contour when the syllable is sentence-final. The distinction between the two tones is neutralized outside of the sentence focus. In interrogative sentences, the distinction is always made., cited in

References

Bibliography

* * Culture of Limburg (Netherlands) East Limburgish dialects Languages of the Netherlands Low Franconian languages Sittard-Geleen {{Netherlands-stub