Kirchröadsj Plat

Kerkrade dialect (natively or simply , literally 'Kerkradish', , Standard Dutch: , Standard German: meaning ''(the) dialect of Kerkrade'') is a Ripuarian dialect spoken in Kerkrade and its surroundings, including Herzogenrath in Germany. It is spoken in all social classes, but the variety spoken by younger people in Kerkrade is somewhat closer to Standard Dutch.

The name is strictly a scientific term on both sides of the border.
Especially on the Dutch side of the border, the speakers of the Kerkrade dialect consider it to be a Limburgish dialect (see Southeast Limburgish dialect) and call it ('Limburgish'), ('Kerkradish') or simply ('dialect').

Grammar

Nouns

There are three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. The corresponding definite articles are , and . The plural form takes the feminine article regardless of the gender.

The plural form of nouns is formed with by adding , or to the stem or by umlauting. Examples: - , - , - , - .

The plural form can also be differentiated from the singular by tone, as in - . This can be combined with other differences, such as umlaut: - .

As in German, the plural form can be unmarked: - .

The ending is used mainly for neuter nouns.

Vocabulary

The Kerkrade dialect has many loanwords from Standard High German, a language formerly used in school and church. However, not all German loanwords are used by every speaker.

An example sentence:

This example sentence illustrates both the High German consonant shift (, ) and the → shift ().

Phonology

As most other Ripuarian and Limburgish dialects, the Kerkrade dialect features a distinction between the ''thrusting tone'' (, or ), which has a shortening effect on the syllable (not shown in transcriptions in this article) and the ''slurring tone'' (, ). In this article, the slurring tone is transcribed as a high tone, whereas the thrusting tone is left unmarked. This is nothing more than a convention, as the phonetics of the Kerkrade pitch accent are severely under-researched. There are minimal pairs, for example 'wall' - 'carrot'.

* The Kerkrade dialect features final-obstruent devoicing, which means that the underlying are devoiced to at the end of a word. Voiced affricates are not affected by this as they occur only in the intervocalic position. The underlying voiced stops and fricatives are realized as voiced before the plural markers and : - , 'question' - 'questions', - , or in verbal conjugation ( - ). The voiced appears only in this context. has two voiced allophones: a uvular fricative , which appears after back vowels, and a palatal approximant , which occurs after front vowels. They are devoiced to and in the word-final position. Phonetically, the voiced variants are the same as and , which are phonological sonorants (and thus cannot participate in final-obstruent devoicing), whereas the voiceless variants are the same as the voiceless allophones of .
* is rare as a phoneme and occurs only in a few words, such as 'to drool'. This mirrors the situation in Luxembourgish.
* The sounds corresponding to Limburgish are very back after back vowels, being uvular (as in Luxembourgish), rather than velar as in Limburgish.
* Most instances of the historical have merged with , so that the word for ''green'' in the Kerkrade dialect is (compare Standard Dutch ). As explained above, many intervocalic instances of are still phonemically as it behaves like an obstruent.

* and appear only in stressed closed syllables and when unstressed.
* and appear only in stressed syllables.
* occurs only in unstressed syllables.
* Both and are phonological back vowels, but only the short is phonetically back: . The long is phonetically central (hereafter represented without the diacritic).

Spelling

The spelling presented here, which is to a large extent Dutch-based is used in ''Kirchröadsjer dieksiejoneer'', the only dictionary of the Kerkrade dialect. There is no official German-based orthography.

Furthermore, there is , which never appears as a separate letter, but only in the centering diphthongs , and (phonetically , and ). However, only half of the centering diphthongs are spelled this way; the remaining , and are spelled , and . In other dialects and regional languages of the Netherlands, is sometimes used for the long open , which is always spelled in this orthography.

As the orthography is Dutch-based, it does not make use of the , which is extensively used on the other side of the border. It represents the phoneme . In turn, German-based orthographies use for the sound, whereas is restricted for the voiceless alveolar affricate , though it can also be spelled . Furthermore, the letter found in those orthographies is also not used. It stands for either or in German-based orthographies.

In this orthography, is spelled , is spelled (although is used in the stem-final position), is spelled , is spelled , whereas is spelled (rather than , which is a common spelling in Dutch-based orthographies of Limburgish).

The orthography is highly phonemic, with the exception of the spelling of which, for the most part, are spelled phonetically. As in Limburgish, Swedish and Norwegian, stress and tone are not marked, blurring the distinction between and in open syllables and between and in closed syllables, where the distinction between the short on the one hand and the long on the other is also blurred. The grapheme-phoneme correspondence is as follows:

Related dialects

The most similar other Ripuarian dialects are those of Bocholtz, Vaals and Aachen.

A distinct East Limburgish dialect called Egelzer plat is spoken in Eygelshoven, in the north of the Kerkrade municipality. The biggest differences between the two is the presence of the High German consonant shift in the Kerkrade dialect as well the pronunciation of the sound written in Limburgish; in Eygelshoven, it is pronounced as in Limburgish and (southern) standard Dutch (as a voiced velar fricative), whereas in the Kerkrade dialect it is pronounced as in Colognian, as a palatal approximant (where it is spelled ), except after back vowels where it is rhotacized to a voiced uvular fricative, resulting in a phonetic merger with .

References

Bibliography

*
*
*
{{refend

Central German languages
Dutch dialects
German dialects
Ripuarian language