Kerkrade dialect

Kerkrade dialect (natively Kirchröadsj plat or simply Kirchröadsj, literally 'Kerkradish', Kirkräödsj, Standard Dutch: Kerkraads, Standard German: (die) Mundart von Kerkrade 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 Ripuarisch 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 Limburgsj ('Limburgish'), Kirchröadsj ('Kerkradish') or simply plat ('dialect').

Nouns
There are three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. The corresponding definite articles are d'r, de and 't. The plural form takes the feminine article de regardless of the gender.

The plural form of nouns is formed with by adding $⟨-e⟩$, $⟨-er⟩$ or $⟨-s⟩$ to the stem or by umlauting. Examples: sjtrief - sjtriefe, hats  - hatser , plavong  - plavongs , pansj  - pensj.

The plural form can also be differentiated from the singular by tone, as in 't peëd - de peëd. This can be combined with other differences, such as umlaut: sjtórm - sjturm.

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

The ending $⟨-er⟩$ 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 (èse, tsezame) and the →  shift (jód).

Phonology
As most other Ripuarian and Limburgish dialects, the Kerkrade dialect features a distinction between the thrusting tone (stoottoon, Schärfung or Stoßton), which has a shortening effect on the syllable (not shown in transcriptions in this article) and the slurring tone (sleeptoon, Schleifton). 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 moer 'wall' - moer  '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 : rub  - rubbe, vroag  'question' - vroage  'questions', wief  - wiever , or in verbal conjugation (iech loog  - ze loge ). 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 ködzele '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 jreun  (compare Standard Dutch groen ). 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 $⟨ë⟩$, which never appears as a separate letter, but only in the centering diphthongs $⟨eë⟩$, $⟨ieë⟩$ and $⟨oeë⟩$ (phonetically, and ). However, only half of the centering diphthongs are spelled this way; the remaining, and  are spelled $⟨üe⟩$, $⟨öa⟩$ and $⟨oa⟩$. In other dialects and regional languages of the Netherlands, $⟨oa⟩$ is sometimes used for the long open, which is always spelled $⟨ao⟩$ in this orthography.

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

In this orthography, is spelled $⟨s⟩$,  is spelled $⟨z⟩$ (although $⟨s⟩$ is used in the stem-final position),  is spelled $⟨ts⟩$,  is spelled $⟨e⟩$, whereas  is spelled $⟨è⟩$ (rather than $⟨ae⟩$, 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 $⟨a, e, o, u⟩$ 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 $⟨aa, ee, oo, uu⟩$), except after back vowels where it is rhotacized to a voiced uvular fricative, resulting in a phonetic merger with.