Palatine German dialects
West Franconian dialect of German
Palatine German (Standard German: Pfälzisch [ˈp͡fɛlt͡sɪʃ] , endonym: Pälzisch) is a group of Rhine Franconian dialects spoken in the Upper Rhine Valley, roughly in the area between Zweibrücken, Kaiserslautern, Alzey, Worms, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Mannheim, Odenwald, Heidelberg, Speyer, Landau, Wörth am Rhein and the border to Alsace and Lorraine, in France, but also beyond.
The English term Palatine refers to the Palatinate region (German: Pfalz). Almost all traditional dialects of the Palatinate belong to the Palatine dialect group, but the Palatine speech area also extends to the west and east into neighboring regions (Saarland, Kurpfalz, southern Hesse). The main dialect divisions within Palatine German are Westpfälzisch (also called Hinterpfälzisch) and Vorderpfälzisch (also called Ostpfälzisch).
The Pennsylvania Dutch language is descended primarily from the Palatine German that was spoken by Palatines who immigrated to North America from the 17th to the 19th centuries and maintained their native language. Danube Swabians in Croatia and Serbia also use many elements of Palatine German.
Characteristics
To the northwest, Palatine German is separated from Moselle Franconian by the das/dat-isogloss (Palatine German uses das or similar forms) and the absence of Rhenish pitch accent. To the southeast, it borders on South Franconian, separated by the Appel/Apfel-line (Palatine German: Appel). Within the greater Rhine Franconian dialect area, the traditional defining isoglosses are the northern fescht/fest-line that separates Palatine German (fescht) from the Hessian dialects (fest), and the southern Haus/Hus-line that separates Palatine German (Haus) from Lorraine Franconian (Hus).
Like other Rhine Franconian dialects, Palatine German has e-apocope (i.e.
“Palatine German dialects” enters the record as west Franconian dialect of German. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Palatine, German and dialects can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Palatine German dialects” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.