Erzgebirgisch (Standard ; Erzgebirgisch: Hendrik Heidler's 400 Seiten Echtes Erzgebirgisch: Wuu de Hasen Hoosn haaßn un de Hosen Huusn do sei mir drhamm. Das Original Wörterbuch. 5th ed., BoD [Books on Demand], Norderstedt 2020, p. 28f. ISBN 978-3-7347-6356-4) is a (East) Central German dialect, spoken mainly in the central Ore Mountains in Saxony. It has received relatively little academic attention. Due to the high mobility of the population and the resulting contact with Upper Saxon, the high emigration rate and its low mutual intelligibility with other dialects, the number of speakers is decreasing.
Language area and history As the following sections will show, Erzgebirgisch is very close to Upper Saxon but also has commonalities with Upper German dialects.
As of today, the Erzgebirgisch area comprises roughly the districts of Mittweida (southern area), Stollberg, Central Ore Mountain District, Annaberg-Buchholz, Freiberg (South) and Aue-Schwarzenberg. Some more speakers live in the town of Lichtenstein, in the Chemnitzer Land district.
Another community live in the Upper Harz Mountains in the Clausthal-Zellerfeld region (Lower Saxony). Their ancestors were miners and emigrated in the 16th century. Here it is referred to as the Upper Harz dialect.
Up to 1929, Erzgebirgisch was also spoken in other parts of Mittweida and Freiberg, in Chemnitz, Zwickau and in the extreme West of the Weißeritzkreis, but these areas are now dominated by Thuringian–Upper Saxon dialects.
Until 1945, the bordering Sudetenland also harbored some Erzgebirgisch speakers, namely in the Kaaden-Duppau area, in whose dialect an anthology of words, proverbs and anecdotes was published (see references). After World War II these speakers had to leave Czechoslovakia and settled down all over the FRG and the GDR. This meant that dialect usage was reduced to the family homes, entailing a shift to the local varieties of their new home towns.
No official attempts to create an orthography have been made, nevertheless there are countless short stories, poems and songs written in Erzgebirgisch. The Sächsischer Heimatverein guidelines to writing in Erzgebirgisch were established in 1937, but are by and large not respected by the majority of authors. This means that linguistic analysis of this dialect has to be done in a field work setting with native speakers. An additional threat to Erzgebirgisch is the popular misconception that Erzgebirgisch was a hillbilly variety of Saxonian, which is an issue for conservation efforts.
Erzgebirgisch is classified as a Central German dialect in linguistics, but also includes Upper German features.
Linguistic features Many of these languages show a tendency to substitute the German verbal prefix by (Erzg. and Bair.) or (Bair. and Swabian). (e.g. westerzgeb. German 'to slaughter'; German 'to tell, to narrate').
Extended use of the particle fei is typical for Upper German and popular in Erzgebirgisch.
Furthermore, German corresponds to in the mentioned varieties (e.g. westerzgeb. huus ), and German corresponds to .
An in the coda, following a long vowel, is regularly deleted in Erzgebirgisch (e.g. Lichtenst. Huuschdee . Rarely, this is also found with monosyllabic words with a short vowel, which undergo compensatory vowel lengthening in the process (e.g. Lichtenst. màà 'man').
Another typical feature of Upper German is the apocope of schwa and (e.g. Lichtenst. Reedlz )
The following table illustrates the similarities between Erzgebirgisch and Upper German dialects. Thuringian/Upper Saxon is listed as a control parameter. Areas marked with a tick means that the feature is present in most subdialects, whereas areas marked as 'partial' are only found in border areas.
FeatureErzgebirgischEast FranconianBavarian-AustrianAlemannicThuringian Rendering of er- as der-/ver- Use of fei Pronunciation of as N-apocope Schwa-apocope Convergence of ch and sch
Subdialects Eastern Erzgebirgisch dialects indicate negation with whereas nèt is used in the West. However, this subdialectal boundary is not clearly demarcated. Thus, both forms are found in the town of Lichtenstein, which lies on the northwestern dialect boundary (although ni is perhaps more common).
In both Eastern Erzgebirgisch and in the Lichtenstein dialect, word-initial clusters and in Standard German as realized as and respectively (e.g. dlee 'small'; dnuchng 'bone').
It is not possible to include the Upper Harz varieties in either of these groups. Furthermore, there is a strong influence from the neighbouring non-Erzgebirgisch dialects in the region bordering Meißenisch, which makes subclassification cumbersome.
Through the summarizing of these findings, four dialects can be listed:
DialectPresent areaHistoric area Eastern Erzgebirgisch Mittlerer Erzgebirgskreis, districts of Annaberg (northern half), Mittweida (south), Freiberg (south) districts of Freiberg (northwest), Mittweida (west), Dippoldiswalde (western fringe), City of Chemnitz, Sudetenland (around Katharinaberg) Western Erzgebirgisch Districts of Aue-Schwarzenberg, Annaberg (southern half) Sudetenland (triangle from Graslitz through Schlaggenwalde to Pressnitz) Northern Erzgebirgisch Rural districts of Chemnitzer Land (Region Lichtenstein), Stollberg City and Rural District of Zwickau Upper Harzisch Clausthal-Zellerfeld Region and Sankt Andreasberg (Lower Saxony)
Phonology As mentioned above, there is no unified orthography. In order to render the language data close to their actual pronunciation, the following conventions have been established:
Consonants The rendering of the consonants follows the notation commonly used for Bavarian. The following table lists the phonemes of the most important Erzgebirgisch dialects, with the IPA value and the corresponding character used in this article.
LabialAlveolarPostalveolar/RetroflexPalatalVelarUvularGlottalStop Affricate / Fricative / Nasal Lateral Approximant
No subdialect shows phonemic contrast between postalveolar ) and retroflex ; they have one or the other. An important sound change in Erzgebirgisch is found with respect to . When precedes a velar consonant, a is inserted in between, as an example, Baarg (German 'mountain') is pronounced . Since this phonological process is completely regular, it is not reflected in orthography. is normally realized as a velarization of the preceding vowel. However, for the sake of clarity, this article will use throughout.
Vowels The writing of the vowels presented here follows in part the official Schwyzertütsch orthography. The orthographic representation of a vowel follows after the IPA characters, if different.
FrontCentralBackClose Near-close (Close-)mid Open-mid (Near-)open~
No subdialect has both and . followed by is pronounced as , but still written as . The close back vowels are often rather unrounded. Vowel length is indicated by doubling the vowel sign in writing: , , , , , , . All vowels (with the exception of and ) are , i.e. that the back vowels , , are more front, and the front vowels , und more back than in Standard German. Short vowels preceding a stressed syllable are reduced to a schwa (e.g. gremàdig 'grammar'). A short vowel preceding a r is lengthened (e.g. Aarzgebèèrgsch). In dialects spoken at higher altitudes, is often realized like . The pronunciation as is the default case for closed syllables. This might be due to overgeneralization of a pattern found in adjacent Saxonian dialects.
Stress Erzgebirgisch has lexical stress. There is a tendency to stress the first syllable even in French loanwords, where Standard German stresses the final syllable (e.g. biro 'office'), but loan words which follow the Standard German pattern are more numerous (e.g. dridewààr 'sidewalk' (from French )).
Morphology Nominal morphology Gender Erzgebirgisch numbers three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. Most Erzgebirgisch lexemes have the same gender as their Standard German equivalents.
GenderErzgebirgischStandard GermanGloss (sg./pl.) masculine màà Mann (m.) man/men gung Junge (m.) boy/boys baam Baum (m.) tree/trees feminine fraa Frau (f.) woman/women sub Suppe (f.) soup/soups dàsch Tasche (f.) bag/bags neuter kind Kind (n.) child/children dridewààr Gehsteig (m.) sidewalk dunl Tunnel (m./n.)tunnel
Case
In distinction to Standard German, the Erzgebirgisch genitive is no longer productive. Other constructions have to be used to indicate possession. For animate possessors, a construction involving the possessor in the dative and an agreeing possessive pronoun is used (dem B sein A). For inanimate possessors, a construction involving (German von) is used. A third possibility is compounding.
examples (North Western dialect):
(1) n'Hàns seine hitsch de-m Hans seine Fuß-bank the-<small caps>GEN.</small caps> Hans his foot-bench "Hans's foot bench"
(2) de fansder fun den haus the windows of the house die Fenster des Hauses (Standard German - genitive) "The windows of the house"
The only case marking available for nouns is dative plural, which is marked by -n , but can often assimilate to other consonants. Nominative and accusative are not marked in the singular on nouns, but articles, adjectives and possessive pronouns help to disambiguate in these cases. Personal pronouns also have some special forms for nominative, accusative and dative.
The following table shows some Erzgebirgisch nominal declension paradigms.
Case/Number tree (m.) bag (f.) child (n.) Nominative singular der baam de dàsch s kind Dative singular n baam der dàsch n kind Accusative singular n baam de dàsch s kind Nominative plural de beeme de dàschn de kiner Dative plural n beemm n dàschn n kinern Accusative plural de beeme de dàschn de kiner
For more information on articles, see below.
Number There are different ways to form the plural in Erzgebirgisch, a feature shared with Standard German. Next to the suffixes -e, -er, -n and -s, ablaut can also be used. Some suffixes trigger umlaut.
There are some nouns which differ in their plural marking between Erzgebirgisch and Standard German. E.g. Erzgebirgisch has -n for nouns ending in in the singular, where Standard German most often has umlaut.
Examples (North Western dialect):
singular (Erzg.)singular (Std.G.)plural (Erzg.)plural (Std.G.) glossfuuchl Vogel fuuchl-n Vögelbirdsnààchl Nagel nààchl-n Nägelnailsmaadl Mädchen maadl-n Mädchengirlsmàst Mast masd-e (along with mosd-n) Mastenmastskind Kind kin-er Kinderchildrenbàrg Park bààrg-s Parksparksfuus Fuß fiis Füßefeetwààng Wagen weeng(-e) Wagencoaches
Articles Erzgebirgisch distinguishes three kinds of articles: emphatic definite article, atonal definite article, indefinite article. The emphatic definite articles are used where Standard German would use deictics like dieser and jener. The other two types closely resemble their Standard German counterparts.
All articles agree in gender, number and case with their head noun. The emphatic articles may also occur without a head noun and often replace the rarely used third person personal pronouns.
Erzgebirgisch has a negative indefinite article just like German, but the similarity to the positive indefinite article is less obvious.
The North-Western dialect has the following forms:
Formmasculinefeminineneuterindefinite article Nominative singular e ne e Dative singular n ner n Accusative singular n ne enon-stressed definite article Nominative singular der de s Dative singular (de)n der (de)n Accusative singular (de)n de s Nominative plural de Dative plural n Accusative plural destressed definite article Nominative singular daar dii dàs Dative singular daan/dèèn daar daan/dèèn Accusative singular daan/dèèn dii dàs Nominative plural dii Dative plural daann/dèènn Accusative plural diinegative article Nominative singular kee keene kee Dative singular keen keener keen Accusative singular keen keene kee Nominative plural keene Dative plural keenn Accusative plural keene