Palatinate German

Infobox Language
name = Palatine German
nativename = Pfälzisch [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=pfl Ethnologue entry] ]
pronunciation =
states = Germany
speakers = unknown
familycolor = Indo-European
fam2 = Germanic
fam3 = West Germanic
fam4 = High German
fam5 = West Middle German
fam6 = Rhenisch Fraconian
script = Latin (German variant)
nation =
iso1 =
iso2 =
iso3 = pfl

Palatine German ("Pfälzisch"/"Pälzisch" or "Pfaelzisch"/"Paelzisch") is a West Franconian dialect of German which is spoken in the Rhine Valley between the cities of Zweibrücken, Kaiserslautern, and Mannheim, and the border to the Alsace region (France) and the Rhine River. Pennsylvania German, or Pennsylvania Dutch is descended primarily from the Palatine German dialects spoken by Germans who immigrated to North America from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries and who chose to maintain their native language. Danube Swabians in Croatia and Serbia also use many elements of it. Some examples of the differences between High German and Pfaelzisch are:

A few examples of sentence pronunciation in Pfälzisch would be:

Isch habb's'm schunn verzehlt, awwer där hot mer's nit geglawt.

In standard German, the sentence would read as such:

Ich hab's ihm schon erzählt, aber er hats mir nicht geglaubt.

The English translation would be,

I already explained it to him, but he didn't believe me.

Hasche au Hunger?

In standard German, the sentence would read as such:

Hast du auch Hunger?

The English translation would be,

Are you hungry, too?

Palatine speakers tend to swallow some of the other letters that standard German speakers enunciate. It's important to point out that pronunciation and grammar vary from region to region (even from town to town.) Palatine Germans often can tell the part of Palatinate or even the village where other speakers are from. Something all Palatine dialects have in common is that the genitive isn't used, same as the German imperfect.

References

External links

* [http://www.ex.ac.uk/~pjoyce/dialects/wmdpfalz.html Modern German Dialects: Pfälzisch]
*