Alsatian dialect

"Alsacien" redirects here. For the German wine grape that is also known as Alsacien, seeElbling.

Not to be confused withLorraine Franconian.

Alsatian
Elsässisch,Elsässerditsch
Native to	France
Region	Alsace
Native speakers	900,000 (2013)
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic High German Upper German Alemannic German Low Alemannic German Upper Rhenish Alsatian
Official status
Recognised minority language in	France
Regulated by	No official regulation Officially promoted through the 'Office pour la Langue et les Cultures d’Alsace et de Moselle (OLCA)'(Office for the language and cultures of Alsace and Moselle), funded by theGrand Estregion (formerly theAlsaceregion), and the departmental councils ofBas-RhinandHaut-Rhin.
Language codes
ISO 639-2	gsw
ISO 639-3	gsw(withSwiss German)
Glottolog	swis1247Central Alemannic
IETF	gsw-FR
Linguistic Map of Alsace

Alsatian(Alsatian:ElsässischorElsässerditsch"Alsatian German";Lorraine Franconian:Elsässerdeitsch;French:Alsacien;German:ElsässischorElsässerdeutsch) is the group ofAlemannic Germandialects spoken in most ofAlsace,a formerly disputed region in eastern France that has passed between French and German control five times since 1681.

Language family

Alsatian is closely related to other nearbyAlemannic dialects,such asSwiss German,Swabian,Markgräflerisch,Kaiserstühlerischand the other Alemannic dialects ofBaden.It is often confused withLorraine Franconian,a more distantly relatedFranconiandialect spoken in the northwest corner of Alsace and in neighbouringLorraine.Like other dialects and languages, Alsatian has also been influenced by outside sources. Words ofYiddishorigin can be found in Alsatian, and modern conversational Alsatian includes adaptations of French words and English words, especially concerning new technologies.

Many speakers of Alsatian could, if necessary, write in reasonablestandard German.For most this would be rare and confined to those who have learned German at school or through work. As with other dialects, various factors determine when, where, and with whom one might converse in Alsatian. Some dialect speakers are unwilling to speak standard German, at times, to certain outsiders and prefer to use French. In contrast, many people living near the border withBasel,Switzerland,will speak their dialect with a Swiss person from that area, as they are mutually intelligible for the most part; similar habits may apply to conversations with people of the nearby GermanMarkgräflerland.Some street names in Alsace may use Alsatian spellings (they were formerly displayed only in French but are now bilingual in some places, especiallyStrasbourgandMulhouse).

Speakers

Fraction of Alsatian speakers in Alsace

Status of Alsatian in France

A bilingual (Frenchand Alsatian) sign inMulhouse

An Alsatian dialect speaker

Since 1992, the constitution of theFifth Republicstates thatFrenchis the official language of the Republic. However, Alsatian, along with otherregional languages,is recognized by theFrench governmentin the official list oflanguages of France.France is a signatory to theEuropean Charter for Regional or Minority Languagesbut has never ratified the law and has not given regional languages the support that would be required by the charter.

Alsatian has gone from being the prevalent language of the region to one in decline. A 1999INSEEsurveycounted 548,000 adult speakers of Alsatian inFrance,making it the second-most-spoken regional language in the country (afterOccitan). Like all regional languages in France, however, the transmission of Alsatian is declining. While 43% of the adult population of Alsace speaks Alsatian, its use has been largely declining amongst the youngest generations.

In 2023 local French public schools began offering Alsatian immersion for the first time. The programs have proven popular with students and parents but after years of official state suppression of the language, struggle to find enough teachers.

A dialect of Alsatian German is spoken in the United States by a group known as theSwiss Amish,whose ancestors emigrated there in the middle of the 19th century. The approximately 7,000 speakers are located mainly inAllen County, Indiana,with "daughter settlements"^{[Note 1]}elsewhere.

Orthography

Majuscule forms	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z	Ä	À	Ë	É	È	Ì	Ö	Ü	Ù
Minuscule forms	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h	i	j	k	l	m	n	o	p	q	r	s	t	u	v	w	x	y	z	ä	à	ë	é	è	ì	ö	ü	ù
IPA	/a/,/ə/	/b̥/	/k/,/ɡ̊/	/d̥/	/e/,/eː/,/ə/	/f/	/ɡ̊/	/h/	/i/	/j/	/k/	/l/	/m/	/n/,/ŋ/	/o/	/p/	/k/	/ʁ/,/ʁ̞/,/ʀ/	/s/	/t/	/u/	/v/,/f/	/ʋ/,/v/	/ks/	/ʏ/,/yː/,/ɪ/,/iː/	/z/	/ɛ/	/ɑ/,/ɑː/	/æ/	/e/	/ɛ/	/ɪ/	/ø/	/y/	/ʊ/

C,Q,andXare only used in loanwords.Yis also used in native words, but is more common in loanwords.

Orthal

Orthal (Orthographe alsacienne)is a revised orthography meant for use by all dialects of Alsatian promoted by theOffice pour la Langue et les Cultures d'Alsace et de Moselle (OLCA).

The latest version (2016)of Orthal is described below. Not all dialects are expected to use all letters & diacritics. For example, Owerlandisch from Southern Alsace primarily uses the additional vowel letters, Ä À Ì Ü.

Dialects from the north (Strasbourg region) make use of more letters including Ë, Ö, Ù and the diphthong ÈI.

In general the principles of Orthal are to:

1. Follow standard German orthography for the regular vowels A, E, I, O, U and their umlauted Standard German forms Ä, Ö, Ü
2. For diphthongs & triphthongs that do not exist in Standard German Orthal combines standard German letters to create anew – e.g., ia, üe (or üa), öi, àui, äi (or èi)
3. For vowel sounds not represented in the Standard German orthography, it uses the Frenchacute&graveaccent marks to create new graphemes that can represent sounds unique to the Alsatian dialects
4. It also follows standard German orthography for consonants as well.

The vowels are pronounced short or long based on their position in the syllable besides the letter type.

A vowel at the end of a syllable, without a subsequent consonant, is a long vowel "V" = Long Vowel (LV). e.g., hà, sì

A vowel followed by a single consonant in a syllable is pronounced as a long vowel "V + C" = Long Vowel (LV). e.g., Ros

Note– A vowel followed by several consonants ( "V + C + C" ) in a syllable is pronounced as a Short Vowel. e.g., Ross

Monophthong – short vowels

Majuscule forms	A	Ä	À	E	É	È	Ë	I	Ì	O	Ö	U	Ü	Ù
Minuscule forms	a	ä	à	e	é	è	ë	i	ì	o	ö	u	ü	ù
IPA	/a/	/ɛ/	/ɑ~ɒ/	/e/,/ə/	/e/	/ɛ/	/æ/	/i/	/ɪ/	/o/	/ø/	/u/	/y/	/ʊ/

Monophthong – long vowels

Majuscule forms	A, AH, AA	À, ÀH, ÀÀ	Ä, ÄH	E, EH, EE	Ë, ËH	È, ÈÈ ÈH	I, II, IH	Ì, ÌH	O, OO, OH	Ö,	U, UU, UH	Ü,ÜÜ, ÜH	Ù, ÙÙ, ÙH	Œ	UE
IPA	/aː/	/ɒː/	/ɛː/	/eː/	/æː/	/ɛː/	/iː/	/ɪː/	/oː/	/øː/	/uː/	/yː/	/ʊː/	/œː/	/ʏ/

Phonology

Consonants

Alsatian has a set of 19 consonants:

	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m	n			ŋ
Stop	b̥	d̥			ɡ̊,kʰ
Affricate	pf	ts	tʃ
Fricative	f,v	s	ʃ	ç	(x)	ʁ	h
Approximant	ʋ	l		j

Three consonants are restricted in their distribution:/kʰ/and/h/only occur 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 some German dialects, haslenitedallobstruentsbut[k].Itslenesare, however,voicelessas in all Southern German varieties. Therefore, they are here transcribed/b̥/,/d̥/,/ɡ̊/.Speakers of French tend to hear them as their/p,t,k/,which also are voiceless and unaspirated.

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 conflate with the phoneme/ʃ/.A labiodental voiced fricative/v/sound is also present as well as an approximant/ʋ/sound./ʁ/may have phonetic realizations as[ʁ],[ʁ̞],and[ʀ].

Vowels

	Front		Central	Back
Close	i	y		u
Near-close	ɪ	ʏ		ʊ
Close-mid	e	ø	(ə)	o
Open-mid	ɛ	œ		ɔ
Open	æ		a	ɑ~ɒ

Short vowels:/ʊ/,/o/,/ɒ/,/a/([æ]in Strasbourg),/ɛ/,/ɪ/,/i/,/y/.

Long vowels:/ʊː/,/oː/,/ɒː/,/aː/,/ɛː/,/eː/,/iː/,/yː/

Grammar

Alsatian nouns inflect by case, gender and number:

• Threecases:nominative,accusative,dative.UnlikeStandard German,Alsatian does not have agenitivecase and instead utilises the dative or the prepositionvu( "of", German "von") plus the dative to fulfill that role in certain cases.
• Threegenders:masculine, feminine and neuter.
• Two numbers: singular and plural.

Comparative vocabulary list

English	Southern Alsatian (Haut-Rhin)	Northern Alsatian (Bas-Rhin)	High Alemannic (Swiss German)	Standard German	Swabian German	Luxembourgish	Pennsylvania German	Standard French
house	's Hüss	s' Hüs	Huus	Haus	Hous	Haus	Haus	maison
loud	lütt	lüt	luut	laut	lout	haart	laut	bruyant
people	d' Litt	d' Lit	Lüt	Leute	Leid	Leit	Leit	gens/peuple
today	hìtt	hit	hüt	heute	heid	haut	heit	aujourd'hui
beautiful	scheen	scheen	schö(n)	schön	sche	schéin	schee	beau
Earth	d' Arda	d' Erd	Ärd(e)	Erde	Erd	Äerd	Erd	terre
Fog	d'r Nawel	de Näwwel	Näbel	Nebel	Nebl	Niwwel	Newwel	brouillard
water	's Wàsser	's Wàsser	Wasser	Wasser	Wasser	Waasser	Wasser	eau
man	d'r Mànn	de Mànn	Maa	Mann	Mà	Mann	Mann	homme
to eat	assa	esse	ässe	essen	essa	iessen	esse	manger
to drink	trìnka	trinke	trinkche	trinken	trenka	drénken	drinke	boire
little	klei	klein/klaan/klëën	chl(e)i	klein	kloi	kleng	glee	petit,petite
child	's Kìnd	's Kind	Chind	Kind	Kind	Kand	Kind	enfant
day	d'r Tàg	de Dàà	Dag	Tag	Dàg	Dag	Daag	jour
woman	d' Fràui	d' Frau	Frou/Frau	Frau	Frau	Fra	Fraa	femme

See also

• Adolphe Stoeber

Notes

1. ^When Amish communities become too big, a number of families move away and form a new settlement, which is referred to as adaughter settlement.The settlement from which they leave is themother settlement.

Sources

• Marthe Philipp and Arlette Bothorel-Witz. 1990. Low Alemannic. In Charles V. J. Russ (ed.), The Dialects of modern German: a linguistic survey, 313–336. Routledge.
• (in French)[1]François Héran, et al. (2002) "La Dynamique des langues en France au fil du XX^esiècle ".Population et sociétés376, Ined.
• (in French)Le système ORTHAL 2016 – Orthographe alsacienne - Quelques règles de base pour faciliter l’écriture et la lecture de l’alsacien dans toutes ses variantes », Jérôme Do Bentzinger, 2016
• (in French)"L'Alsacien, deuxième langue régionale de France"(PDF).Chiffres pour l'Alsace.INSEE. December 2002.
• (in French)Brunner, Jean-Jacques.L'Alsacien sans peine.ASSiMiL, 2001.ISBN2-7005-0222-1
• (in French)Jung, Edmond. Grammaire de L'Alsacien. Dialecte de Strasbourg avec indications historiques. 1983. Straßburg: Ed. Oberlin.
• (in French)Laugel-Erny, Elsa.Cours d'alsacien.Les Editions du Quai, 1999.
• (in French)Matzen, Raymond, and Léon Daul.Wie Geht's? Le Dialecte à la portée de tousLa Nuée Bleue, 1999.ISBN2-7165-0464-4
• (in French)Matzen, Raymond, and Léon Daul.Wie Steht's? Lexiques alsacien et français, Variantes dialectales, GrammaireLa Nuée Bleue, 2000.ISBN2-7165-0525-X
• (in French)Steible, Lucie.Le contrôle temporel des consonnes occlusives de l’alsacien et du français parlé en Alsace.Linguistique. Université de Strasbourg, 2014.
• (in French)Rünneburger, Henri.Dictionnaire alsacien-francais.3 vols. Hamburg: Baar 2021 (100.000 lemmata).

External links

• Euromosaic:The status of Germanic languages in France (on website of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya).
• Alsatian placenames
• Wörterbuch der elsässischen Mundarten(in German)
• Alsatian artists
• Webschnuffler,article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on new versions of Microsoft programs in Alsatian(in German)
• Office pour la langue et les cultures d'Alsace et de Moselle(in French and German)
• Alsatian dictionary(in French)(in Alsatian)