Maastrichtian dialect phonology

The phonology of the Maastrichtian dialect, especially with regards to vowels is quite extensive due to the dialect's tonal nature.

Consonants

 * are bilabial, whereas are labiodental.
 * is realized as a bilabial approximant in the onset and as labio-velar  in the coda. In this article, both are transcribed with ⟨w⟩, following the recommendations of Carlos Gussenhoven regarding transcribing the corresponding Standard Dutch phone.
 * Voiceless plosives are unaspirated, whereas the voiced plosives are fully voiced.
 * Word-initial and especially  can be only partially voiced  but without merging with, respectively,  and.
 * are laminal postalveolar. Phonemically, they can be analysed as.
 * Word-initial is restricted to loanwords.
 * is a voiced fricative trill, with the fricative component varying between uvular and post-velar . The fricative component is particularly audible in the syllable coda, where a partial devoicing to  also occurs.
 * A non-phonemic glottal stop is inserted between a syllable-final  and the following vowel.
 * Final clusters of and  followed by  and, in the case of  alone,  are all separated by a schwa, adding an extra syllable: sjolk  →  'apron'. The extra syllable is not shown in the orthography.

Vowels

 * The vowel phonemes of Maastrichtian Limburgish can be categorized as short lax, short tense , long lax , long tense , diphthongal and the unstressed-only.
 * are phonological diphthongs, akin to Standard Dutch (which is how  transcribe the Maastrichtian sounds). They are diphthongal  when combined with Accent 1 and monophthongal  when combined with Accent 2. In this article, the short vowel+glide transcription ⟨ɛj, œj, ɔw⟩ akin to that found in the Mestreechter Taol dictionary is used because the ending points of especially  and  are exactly like those of the phonological vowel+glide sequences . The difference between  and  as well as  and  lies purely in the openness of the first element (and its rounding, in the case of the latter pair). Thus, the ending points of  are all closer than in Standard Dutch.
 * (the vowel usually spelled with $⟨ae⟩$ in Limburgish) has mostly merged with under the influence of Standard Dutch. A phonemic  appears in French loanwords such as tête  'brawn'. Most phonetic instances of  in the dialect are monophthongized .  claim that there is a phonetic difference between the two (with the phonetic realization of  being more open ), yet the Mestreechter Taol dictionary (written, among others, by Aarts) does not make such a distinction; instead, ⟨æː⟩ is used for the  phoneme combined with Accent 2. In this article, the difference between  stemming from  and the one stemming from  is not transcribed.
 * The open-mid front is diphthongized to  in words with Accent 2 only when it is a realization of the underlying . The underlying  does not participate in tonal distinction.
 * The open-mid contrast not only with the close-mid  but also with the open  in (near)-minimal pairs such as eus  'ours' vs. struis  vs. käös  'choice'. In the verb koume 'to come', the height difference between  and  is the only difference between the first and third person plural present indicative form koume  '(we/they) come' (homophonous with the infinitive) and the corresponding preterite form kaome  '(we/they) came'.
 * As in other Limburgish dialects, the phonological open-mid series (the long counterparts of the ) is the long lax series (note than in other dialects, the latter two vowels are usually transcribed with ⟨œː⟩ and ⟨ɔː⟩. Here, ⟨ɶː⟩ and ⟨ɒː⟩ are used instead so that they are strongly distinguished from the monophthongized  and  in phonetic transcription).  is the sole long open vowel as far as the phonology is concerned.  are grouped together with  in the table for the sake of simplicity and phonetic accuracy ( is the actual phonetic open-mid series).
 * is a phonological open back vowel as it umlauts to, or.

Taking all of that into consideration, the vocalic phonemes of Maastrichtian can be classified much like those found in other Limburgish dialects:

Phonetic realization

 * slightly more central than the corresponding tense vowels (though  itself is strongly centralized as well, being closer to ); in addition, both  and  are more weakly rounded than  and.
 * The long close-mid monophthongs have a very similar allophonic variation to : they are monophthongal  when combined with Accent 2. When combined with Accent 1, they are realized as narrow diphthongs, especially in the word-final position. The offsets of those diphthongs never reach the fully close position of . Because of that, this slight allophonic variation is ignored elsewhere in the article.
 * Among the front rounded vowels, all but are central. In addition,  is near-open and the offset of  is central and rounded: . The diphthongal allophone of  (transcribed broadly with ⟨øː⟩ in this article) is also central: .  is mid front . In the rest of the article, they are transcribed with the simple symbols ⟨y, yː, øː, œː, ɶː, œj, œ⟩, not least because they are phonologically front, as they are the umlauted versions of the corresponding back vowels ( in the case of ).
 * In the case of the and  pairs, the biggest height difference is between  and . The remaining  pair is more similar, so that  could be transcribed  (or, capturing its centrality) in narrow transcription.
 * are in free variation with weakly diphthongal (with  being central  like  and ) that glide towards the close-mid, rather than the close . The offsets of  are less prominent than those of , which means that they sound as something in-between purely monophthongal  and the Accent 1 diphthongs . When it is a realization of the underlying  ( is toneless),  too can be diphthongized to  (again, with an offset that is less prominent than that of ) when combined with Accent 2. When combined with Accent 1, it is always diphthongal . This variation is not shown in transcriptions in this article, and  are consistently transcribed as monophthongs.
 * is mid.
 * is near-open near-front, whereas is open near-front.
 * Among the back vowels, and  (the monophthongal allophone of ) are near-back; in addition, the latter is more open than the short, whereas  is closer than cardinal : . The remaining  and  are more peripheral (and  is also near-open):.
 * The starting points of are all more open than the phonological short vowels, being open-mid front  in the first case, open-mid central  (rather than front, like ) in the second case and somewhat lowered open-mid near-back  in the last case. The first one has thus the quality that is in-between the short vowels  and , whereas the later two are in-between the short lax  and their phonological long counterparts . The monophthongal allophones of  are just elongated versions of the starting points of the corresponding diphthongs:.

Vowel+glide sequences
The possible short vowel+glide sequences in the Maastrichtian dialect are. The long vowel+glide sequences are. The labial combines only with short vowels, whereas the palatal  can be preceded by both short and long vowels. The sequences and  contrast with diphthongal allophones of  and. Thus, beej '(I) offer' does not rhyme with dee  'that (one)', nor does keuj  'cows' rhyme with keu  'billiard cue'. These are among the subtlest phonetic distinctions in the dialect.

As noted above, the distinction between diphthongs and vowel+glide sequences is not clear-cut. Among the phonological diphthongs, especially and  combined with Accent 1 phonetically resemble the vowel+glide sequences. The difference between and  as well as  and  lies purely in the quality of the first element. There is no * sequence to rival the diphthong. In that regard, Maastrichtian is much like the Weert dialect, in which the three phonemic closing diphthongs are also associated with vowel+glide sequences in words with Accent 1, although they begin more open in Weert:. This does lead to a merger with (written  in IPA transcriptions of Weert Limburgish on Wikipedia) and, unlike in Maastricht. Furthermore, the term Accent 1 stands merely for a short vowel in Weert, with the vowel+glide sequences being the shorter than the diphthongs.

Furthermore, (the first one combined with Accent 1) vary with  with no evident social correlate. Thus, vojl 'dirty' can be pronounced as either or, whereas gajdeef 'crook' can be pronounced as either  or.

Phonotactics

 * occurs only in unstressed syllables.
 * The short lax vowels must be followed by a coda. A number of interjections (such as jó 'yes?') violate this rule.
 * The short tense as well as the phonological diphthongs  are banned before coda.
 * Before a final, the short lax vowels are rare.
 * No contrast between the short and  exists before nasals, where the vowels can be identified as . Minimal pairs can be found before obstruents and.

Stress and tone
Stress location is the same as in the Standard Dutch cognates. Main stress is regularly on the penultimate syllable. The intonational system is much like that of Standard Dutch and Standard German.

As many other Limburgish dialects, the Maastrichtian dialect features a distinction between Accent 1 and Accent 2, limited to stressed syllables. The former can be analyzed as lexically toneless, whereas the latter as an underlying high tone. Phonetically, syllables with Accent 2 are considerably longer. An example of a minimal pair is 'to rinse' vs. 'to play'. The difference is not marked in the orthography, so that both of those words are spelled speule.

Van Buuren claims that the difference lies only in length, and that there is no tonal contrast anywhere. However, research shows that there is a crucial difference between words like vuur 'fire' and those like broet  'bride', as words of the former type have the pitch features typical of Accent 2, whereas the latter do not. Despite that, the Mestreechter Taol dictionary transcribes it as a length distinction, with Accent 2 being transcribed as longer than Accent 1.

The distribution of the tonal contrast is rather erratic. It occurs in the following contexts:
 * A short lax vowel followed by a sonorant other than and  (excluding the phonological diphthongs );
 * The tense vowels, unless follows;
 * The long tense followed by coda ;

This means that neither the short tense nor the long lax  participate in the tonal contrast, being toneless by default.

Sample
The sample text is a reading of the first sentence of The North Wind and the Sun.

Orthographic version
De noordewind en de zon hadde 'n drökke discussie euver de vraog wee vaan hunen twieje de sterkste waor, toen zjuus iemand veurbij kaom dee 'nen dikke, werme jas aonhad.