Alsatian language

Alsatian (Elsässerditsch; Alsacien; Elsässisch or Elsässerdeutsch) is a Low Alemannic German dialect spoken in most of Alsace, a region in eastern France which has passed between French and German control many times.

Not readily intelligible to speakers of standard German, it is closely related to other nearby Alemannic dialects, such as Swiss German, Swabian, and Badisch. It is often confused with Lorraine Franconian, a more distantly related Franconian dialect spoken in the far north-east of Alsace and in neighboring Lorraine.

Many speakers of Alsatian write in standard German. Street names in the Alsace may use Alsatian spellings (they were formerly displayed only in French but are now bilingual in some places, especially Strasbourg and Mulhouse)

Phonology

Consonants

Alsatian has a rather simple set of 14 consonants:

	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	m	n			ŋ
Stop	b̥	d̥			ɡ̊, kʰ
Affricate	pf	ts
Fricative	f	s	ʃ	ç
Sonorant	ʋ	l, ɾ

Two consonants are restricted in their distribution: /kʰ/ only occurs at the beginning of a word or morpheme, and then only if followed immediately by a vowel; /ŋ/ never occurs at the beginning of a word or morpheme.

Alsatian, like many German dialects, has lenitioned all obstruents but [k]. Its lenes are, however, voiceless as in all Southern German varieties. Therefore, they are here transcribed .

As in German, the phoneme /ç/ has a velar allophone [x] after back vowels (/u/, /o/, /ɔ/, and /a/ in those speakers who do not pronounce this as [æ]), and palatal [ç] elsewhere. In southern dialects, there is a tendency to pronounce it /x/ in all positions, and in Strasbourg the palatal allophone tends to become [ʃ], and conflate with the phoneme /ʃ/.

Vowels

Short vowels: ([æ] in Strasbourg), .

Long vowels:

Diphthongs

Comparative vocabulary list

English	Alsatian	High Alemannic	Standard German	Standard French	Swabian German dialect
house	Hüüs [hyˑs]	Huus	Haus	maison	Hous
loud	lüüt [lyˑd̥]	luut	laut	bruyant	lout
people	Lit [lɪd̥]	Lüt	Leute	gens	Leid
today	hit [hɪd̥]	Hüt	heute	aujourd'hui	heid
beautiful	schen [ʃeːn]	schö	schön	beau	sche
Earth	Ard [aˑɾd̥]	Ärd	Erde	terre	Erd
Fog	Nabel [naːb̥l̩]	Näbel	Nebel	brouillard	Nebl
water	Wàsser [ʋɑsəɾ]	Wasser	Wasser	eau	Wasser
man	Mànn [mɑˑn]	Maa	Mann	homme	Mà
eat	assa [asə]	ässe	essen	manger	essa
to drink	trenka [d̥ɾənɡ̊ə]	trinkche	trinken	boire	trenka
little	klai [ɡ̊laɪ̯]	chlei	klein	petit, petite	kloi
child	Kind [kɪnd̥]	Chind	Kind	enfant	Kind
day	Däi []	Dag	Tag	jour	Dàg
woman	Frài []	Frou	Frau	femme	Frau

Status of Alsatian in France

The constitution of the Fifth Republic states that French alone is the official language of the Republic. However Alsatian, along with other regional languages, are recognized by the French government in the official list of languages of France. A 1999 INSEE survey counted 548,000 adult speakers of Alsatian in France, making it the second most-spoken regional language in the country (after Occitan). Like all regional languages in France, however, the transmission of Alsatian is on the decline. While 39% of the adult population of Alsace speaks Alsatian, only one in four children speaks it, and only one in ten children uses it regularly.

References

• François Héran, et al. (2002) "La dynamique des langues en France au fil du XX^e siècle". Population et sociétés 376, Ined.
• "L'alsacien, deuxième langue régionale de France" Insee, Chiffres pour l'Alsace no. 12, December 2002
• Brunner, Jean-Jacques. L'alsacien sans peine. ASSiMiL, 2001. ISBN 2-7005-0222-1
• Laugel-Erny, Elsa. Cours d'alsacien. Les Editions du Quai, 1999.
• Matzen, Raymond, and Léon Daul. Wie Geht's ? Le dialecte à la portée de tous La Nuée Bleue, 1999. ISBN 2-7165-0464-4
• Matzen, Raymond, and Léon Daul. Wie Steht's ? Lexiques alsacien et français, Variantes dialectales, Grammaire La Nuée Bleue, 2000. ISBN 2-7165-0525-X

External links

• Euromosaic - German in France - The status of German languages in France.
• Alsatian placenames
• Wörterbuch der elsässischen Mundarten