Venlo dialect (

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 ...

and li, Venloos) is the city dialect and a variant 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 ...

spoken in the

city of

Venlo Venlo () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the southeastern Netherlands, close to the border with Germany. It is situated in the province of Limburg (Netherland ...

alongside the

Dutch language 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 The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-Europea ...

(with which it is not mutually intelligible). It belongs to South Guelderish Limburgish, which is a group of transitional dialects between Kleverlands and

East 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 and in the neig ...

spoken in the northern part of Netherlands Limburg. That group of dialects is also known by its Dutch name '' Mich-kwartier'' ("Mich area", based on the usage of instead of the Brabantian as the accusative form of 'I').

Phonology

Vowels

* is restricted to unstressed syllables. * is near-close . * is the only "short open E" sound in the dialect. The phonetically open does not have a phonemic status, and it is unclear whether it even appears as an allophone of . * are phonetically open but phonologically open-mid, the back counterparts of . * is somewhat 'laxer' than in Standard Dutch. As in most other dialects, it is the phonological long counterpart of .

Pitch accent

As many other Limburgish dialects, the Venlo 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 'to rinse' vs. 'to play' and 'legs' vs. 'leg', with the first word in each pair featuring Accent 1 (left unmarked) and the second word Accent 2 (transcribed as a high tone).

Bibliography

* * Culture of Limburg (Netherlands) South Guelderish Limburgish Languages of the Netherlands Low Franconian languages Venlo

References

{{Netherlands-stub