Definición y significado de Alsatian_language

Alsatian
Elsässerdeutsch, Alsacien
Spoken in	France
Region	Alsace
Native speakers	more than 700,000  (date missing)
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic High German Upper German Alemannic German Alsatian
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gsw
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Alsatian (Alsatian and Alemannic German: Elsässerditsch (literally Alsatian-German); French: Alsacien; German: Elsässisch or Elsässerdeutsch) is a Low Alemannic German dialect spoken in most of Alsace, a region in eastern France which has passed between French and German control many times.

  Language family

  A bilingual (French and Alsatian) sign in Mulhouse.

Alsatian is closely related to other nearby Alemannic dialects, such as Swiss German, Swabian, and Badisch. It is often confused with Lorraine Franconian, a more distantly related Franconian dialect spoken in the far north-east of Alsace and in neighboring Lorraine.

Many speakers of Alsatian could, if pressed, write in reasonable standard German. For most this would be rare and confined to those who have learnt German at school or through work. They would, however, tend to resort always to writing in French, the language in which they have been educated. Dialect is very much reserved for close family and friends. People switch from one to the other, mid-conversation or even mid-sentence, as required. Many unwritten rules determine when, where and to whom to speak dialect. Some dialect speakers are unwilling to speak standard German, at times, to certain outsiders and prefer to use French. In contrast, many people living near the border with Basel, Switzerland, will speak their dialect with a Swiss person from that area, as they are mutually understandable for the most part. Some street names in Alsace may use Alsatian spellings (they were formerly displayed only in French but are now bilingual in some places, especially Strasbourg and Mulhouse).^{[citation needed]}

  Orthography

Letters colored red are only used in loanwords.

  Phonology

  Consonants

Alsatian has a rather simple set of 14 consonants:

Two consonants are restricted in their distribution: /kʰ/ only occurs at the beginning of a word or morpheme, and then only if followed immediately by a vowel; /ŋ/ never occurs at the beginning of a word or morpheme.

Alsatian, like many German dialects, has lenited all obstruents but [k]. Its lenes are, however, voiceless as in all Southern German varieties. Therefore, they are here transcribed /b̥/, /d̥/, /ɡ̊/.

As in German, the phoneme /ç/ has a velar allophone [x] after back vowels (/u/, /o/, /ɔ/, and /a/ in those speakers who do not pronounce this as [æ]), and palatal [ç] elsewhere. In southern dialects, there is a tendency to pronounce it /x/ in all positions, and in Strasbourg the palatal allophone tends to conflate with the phoneme /ʃ/.

  Vowels

Short vowels: /ʊ/, /o/, /ɒ/, /a/ ([æ] in Strasbourg), /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /i/, /y/.

Long vowels: /ʊː/, /oː/, /ɒː/, /aː/, /ɛː/, /eː/, /iː/, /yː/

  Diphthongs

This section is empty. You can help by adding to it.

  Comparative vocabulary list

  Status of Alsatian in France

The constitution of the Fifth Republic states that French alone is the official language of the Republic. However, Alsatian, along with other regional languages, is recognized by the French government in the official list of languages of France. A 1999 INSEE survey counted 548,000 adult speakers of Alsatian in France, making it the second most-spoken regional language in the country (after Occitan). Like all regional languages in France, however, the transmission of Alsatian is on the decline. While 39% of the adult population of Alsace speaks Alsatian, only one child in four speaks it, and only one child in ten uses it regularly.

  References

• (French) [1] François Héran, et al. (2002) "La dynamique des langues en France au fil du XX^e siècle". Population et sociétés 376, Ined.
• (French) [2] "L'alsacien, deuxième langue régionale de France" Insee, Chiffres pour l'Alsace no. 12, December 2002
• (French) Brunner, Jean-Jacques. L'alsacien sans peine. ASSiMiL, 2001. ISBN 2-7005-0222-1
• (French) Laugel-Erny, Elsa. Cours d'alsacien. Les Editions du Quai, 1999.
• (French) Matzen, Raymond, and Léon Daul. Wie Geht's ? Le dialecte à la portée de tous La Nuée Bleue, 1999. ISBN 2-7165-0464-4
• (French)Matzen, Raymond, and Léon Daul. Wie Steht's ? Lexiques alsacien et français, Variantes dialectales, Grammaire La Nuée Bleue, 2000. ISBN 2-7165-0525-X

  External links

Media related to Alsatian language at Wikimedia Commons

Articles in Alsatian on the Alemannic/Swiss German edition of Wikipedia

• 'Hover & Hear' Alsatian pronunciations, and compare with equivalents in English and other Germanic languages.
• Euromosaic: The status of Germanic languages in France (on website of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya).
• Alsatian placenames
• (German)Wörterbuch der elsässischen Mundarten
• Alsatian dictionary
• Alsatian artists