Swabian (Schwäbisch) is one of the Alemannic dialects of High German, spoken in the region of Swabia. Swabia covers much of Germany's southwestern Bundesland (state) of Baden-Württemberg (including the capital Stuttgart and the rural area known as the Swabian Alb) and the southwest of the Bundesland Bavaria. Swabian is also spoken by part of the German minorities in Hungary, former Yugoslavia, Romania, and the former Soviet Union. Alemannic German (Alemannisch) is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Germany. ... Baden-Württemberg is a state of the Federal Republic of Germany in the southwestern part of the country to the east of the Upper Rhine. ... City Center seen from Weinsteige Road Stuttgart Palace Square - New Palace Solitude Palace The 1956 TV Tower U.S. Army Kelley Barracks Stuttgart [], located in southern Germany, is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg with a population of 591,528 (as of April 2006) in the city... A view on the Swabian Alb, with its typical hills and a juniper meadow The Albtrauf, which forms the western border of the Swabian Alb The Swabian Jura (German: Schwäbische Alb) is a plateau in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, extending 220 km from southwest to northeast and 40 to... The geographic region and Free State of Bavaria (German:  ), with an area of 70,553 km² (27,241 square miles) and 12. ...

The dialect ranges from a 'standard' Swabian, spoken in Stuttgart (where young people tend more and more to speak Standard German), to slightly differing and 'thicker' forms found in smaller towns in the countryside. Older people can often tell the exact village a person comes from merely by hearing his or her accent. City Center seen from Weinsteige Road Stuttgart Palace Square - New Palace Solitude Palace The 1956 TV Tower U.S. Army Kelley Barracks Stuttgart [], located in southern Germany, is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg with a population of 591,528 (as of April 2006) in the city...

Swabian is difficult to understand for speakers of Standard German (SG.). It contains vocabulary that differs altogether from Standard German (eg. 'jam' in SG. is Marmelade while in Swabian it becomes Gsälz; or SG. "Tasche" (bag) is "guck", which most Germans know as an informal form of "to see" ). Standard German is the prescriptive norm variant of the German language used as a written language, in formal contexts, and for communication between different dialect areas. ...

Characteristics

Linguistic

Characteristics (in comparison to Standard German) include:

• The Middle High German monophthongs î and û have become [e͡i] and [o͡u], not [a͡ɪ] and [a͡ʊ].
• the ending "-et" for verbs in the 3rd person plural (e.g. "mir ganget" instead of SG. "wir gehen" ("we go"
• as in other Alemannic dialects, the pronunciation of "s" before consonants as [ʃ] (e.g. Fest 'party' is pronounced as Fescht)
• the diminutive ending "-le" (spoken very quickly, e.g. Haus may become Häusle, Bisschen may become Bissle) and "-la" for plurals (e.g. Spätzle becomes Spätzla)

Middle High German (MHG, German Mittelhochdeutsch) is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. ... A monophthong (in Greek μονόφθογγος = single note) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation; compare diphthong. ...

Sound

The Swabian dialect is spoken with a unique melody that is also present when Swabian native speakers talk in Standard German. Intonation, in linguistics, is the variation of pitch when speaking. ... Standard German is the prescriptive norm variant of the German language used as a written language, in formal contexts, and for communication between different dialect areas. ...

Variation

The Swabian dialect is composed of numerous sub-dialects, each of which has its own variations. These sub-dialects can be categorized by the difference in the formation of the past participle of 'sein' (to be) into gwä and gsi. The Gsi group is nearer to other Alemannic dialects, such as Swiss German. Alemannic German (Alemannisch) is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

There is also a big difference between Swabian German spoken by Catholics and the Swabian spoken by Protestants.^{[citation needed]}

Swabian dialect writers

• Sebastian Sailer (1714-1777)
• August Lämmle
• Josef Eberle aka Sebastian Blau
• Peter Schlack, b. 1943

Portrait of Sebastian Sailer, by Gottfried Bernhard Göz Sebastian Sailer (née Johann Valentin Sailer; February 12, 1714 - March 7, 1777) was a German Premonstratensian Baroque preacher and writer. ...

See also

• Swabia

Germany. ...

External links

• The Swabian-English dictionary
• The Ongoing (Un)merging of Stops in the Swabian Dialect of Isny im Allgäu
• The Josef Eberle Endowment at the Kade-Duesenberg German House and Cultural Center, Valparaiso University