The Gail Valley dialect (, ''ziljščina''
[Logar, Tine. 1996. ''Dialektološke in jezikovnozgodovinske razprave''. Ljubljana: SAZU]) is the westernmost
Slovene dialect in the
Carinthian dialect group, spoken in parts of southern
Carinthia in
Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
, in the northeasternmost part of the
Province of Udine in
Italy
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
, and in northeastern
Upper Carniola
Upper Carniola ( ; ; ) is a traditional region of Slovenia, the northern mountainous part of the larger Carniola region. The largest town in the region is Kranj, and other urban centers include Kamnik, Jesenice, Jesenice, Jesenice, Domžale and ...
in
Slovenia
Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...
.
Geographic extension
It is spoken in Austrian
Carinthia in the
Gail Valley east of
Hermagor and west of
Faak am See (), in the upper
Canale Valley (, ) along the
Fella River () to east of
Pontebba and, together with the
Kranjska Gora
Kranjska Gora (; ) is a town in northwestern Slovenia, on the Sava Dolinka River in the Upper Carniola region, close to the Austrian and Italy, Italian borders. It is the seat of the Municipality of Kranjska Gora. The tripoint between Austria, It ...
subdialect, along the upper course of the
Sava Dolinka River to east of
Gozd Martuljek. Settlements in the dialect area include
Malborghetto,
Ugovizza,
Valbruna,
Camporosso,
Cave del Predil, and
Tarvisio (in Italy),
Förolach, Faak am See,
Feistritz an der Gail,
Arnoldstein,
Fürnitz, and
Mallestig (in Austria), and
Rateče, Kranjska Gora, and Gozd Martuljek (in Slovenia).
[Toporišič, Jože. 1992. ''Enciklopedija slovenskega jezika''. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, p. 376.] Viktor Paulsen divided the Gail Valley dialect into six subdialects: the Egg-Görtschach subdialect (comprising the Egg and Görtschach groups), the Potschach subdialect, the Saak subdialect, the Vorderberg subdialect, the Feistritz subdialect, and the Radendorf subdialect.
[Pronk, Tijmen. ''The Slovene Dialect of Egg and Potschach in the Gailtal, Austria''. Amsterdam: Rodopi, p. 5.]
Phonological and morphological characteristics
The Gail Valley dialect has
pitch accent
A pitch-accent language is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch (music), pitch (tone (linguistics), linguistic tone) rather than by vol ...
, reduction of vowels to ''ə'' in preaccentual position, development of open ''e'' and ''o'' > ''a'' in postaccentual position, shortening of long vowels in closed syllables, frequent
epenthetic ''n'', ''v'' > ''b'' before ''e i r l'', hiatus as a result of elision of intervocalic
(e.g., ''krava'' > ''kraa'' 'cow'), voiced obstruents in word-final position, and an inflected conditional auxiliary (''besem, besi, be'').
The Gail Valley dialect has palatalization of ''k, g, h'' > ''č, ž, š'' before front vowels and lacks the standard Slovene
morphophonemic alternation between
and
for example, , instead of , 'drank' (masc., fem.), a phenomenon known as ''švapanje'' in Slovene.
References
Slovene dialects
{{Slavic-lang-stub