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Erzgebirgisch (Standard ; Erzgebirgisch: Arzgebirgsch 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, 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.
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 and emigration 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 .
Until 1945, the bordering Sudetenland also harbored some Erzgebirgisch speakers, namely in the Kaaden-Duppau area, in whose dialect an anthology of words, and was published (see references). After World War II these speakers had to leave Czechoslovakia and settled down all over the West Germany and the East Germany. This meant that dialect usage was reduced to the home language, entailing a language 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 Poetic licence by the majority of authors. This means that linguistic analysis of this dialect has to be done in a field work setting with . 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.
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 Hose), and German corresponds to .
An in the Syllable coda, following a long vowel, is regularly deleted in Erzgebirgisch (e.g. Lichtenst. Huuschdee Hohenstein. Rarely, this is also found with monosyllabic words with a short vowel, which undergo compensatory vowel lengthening in the process (e.g. Lichtenst. màà Mann 'man').
Another typical feature of Upper German is the apocope of schwa and (e.g. Lichtenst. Reedlz Rödlitz)
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.
In both Eastern Erzgebirgisch and in the Lichtenstein dialect, word-initial clusters and in Standard German as realized as and respectively (e.g. dlee klein 'small'; dnuchng Knochen '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:
| districts of Freiberg (northwest), Mittweida (west), Dippoldiswalde (western fringe), City of Chemnitz, Sudetenland (around Katharinaberg) |
| Sudetenland (triangle from Graslitz through Schlaggenwalde to Pressnitz) |
| City and Zwickauer Land of Zwickau |
| man/men |
| boy/boys |
| tree/trees |
| woman/women |
| soup/soups |
| bag/bags |
| child/children |
| sidewalk |
| tunnel |
examples (North Western dialect):
| hitsch | ||
| Fuß-bank | ||
| foot-bench | ||
| "Hans's foot bench" | ||
| haus | ||||
| house | ||||
| (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, 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.
| s kind |
| n kind |
| s kind |
| de kiner |
| n kinern |
| de kiner |
For more information on articles, see below.
There are some nouns which differ in their plural marking between Erzgebirgisch and Standard German. E.g. Erzgebirgisch has -n for nouns ending in -(e)l in the singular, where Standard German most often has umlaut.
Examples (North Western dialect):
| birds |
| nails |
| girls |
| masts |
| children |
| parks |
| feet |
| coaches |
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:
| e | ||
| n | ||
| e | ||
| s | ||
| (de)n | ||
| s | ||
| de | ||
| n | ||
| de | ||
| dàs | ||
| daan/dèèn | ||
| dàs | ||
| dii | ||
| daann/dèènn | ||
| dii | ||
| kee | ||
| keen | ||
| kee | ||
| keene | ||
| keenn | ||
| keene | ||
The article n assimilates in place of articulation to the preceding consonant. It is m before p, pf, f, w and m and ng before k, g, ch ( or ) and ng.
Examples:
| gesààd |
| gesagt. |
| said. |
| gaam |
| gegeben. |
| given. |
| àà |
| an. |
| on. |
| gaam |
| gegeben. |
| given. |
There is no emphatic form for third person personal pronouns. The emphatic forms of the definite article have to be used instead. To outsiders this may often come across as impolite.
Unlike nouns, personal pronouns distinguish both number and case.
| miich |
| diich |
| dann/ dèèn |
| dii |
| dàs |
| uns |
| eich |
| dii |
| sii |
| mich |
| dich/ tsch |
| n |
| se |
| s |
| uns |
| eich |
| se |
| se |
Pronouns with ch have sch in the Northwestern dialect. The atonal second person singular pronoun is de when it precedes a verb, and du when following. There are extra pronouns to express politeness, unlike German, which uses third person plural for this function.
Examples:
| gesààd |
| gesagt? |
| said? |
| gaam |
| gegeben. |
| given. |
| un(s)(e)r- |
| ei(e)r- |
| iir- |
| iir- |
| iir- |
singular pronouns lose the n before another n or a -Ø-suffix.
First person plural loses the s everywhere but in the North Western dialect. First and second person plural lose the e before a suffix starting with a vowel.
| -Ø | ||
| -n | ||
| -Ø | ||
| -e | ||
| -n | ||
| -e | ||
This paradigm makes use of only three letters e, n and r.
examples:
| hund |
| Hund |
| dog |
| schwasder |
| Schwester |
| sister |
Third person pronouns make heavy use of the dative construction (see above), just like nouns.
| dàsch | ||
| Tasche | ||
| bag | ||
| "her bag" | ||
vgl.:
| dàsch | |||
| "die Tasche dieser Frau" | |||
| "The woman's bag" | |||
| schdàd | |||
| Stadt | |||
| town | |||
| "in die Stadt (hinein)" | |||
| "inwards in the town" | |||
The canonic preposition n (in) is never deleted in Lichtenstein, but almost always in the western dialects due to the more widespread dropping of n. This leads to the impression that nei is the preposition. One should also notice that goal of motion is encoded by the dative, and not by the accusative as in Standard German. The motion component is expressed by nei. This construction is also found with many other prepositions: dràà der kèrch ("an der Kirche", "bei der Kirche" at the church).
| for expensive jewels |
| for an expensive ring |
The following table lists all agreement suffixes for adjectives:
| -(e)s | ||
| -n | ||
| -(e)s | ||
| -e | ||
| -n | ||
| -e | ||
| -e | ||
| -n | ||
| -e | ||
| -n | ||
| -n | ||
| -n | ||
More examples
| màà |
| Mann |
| man |
| fraa | ||
| Frau | ||
| woman | ||
| to this beautiful woman | ||
examples:
| daar |
| er/dieser |
| he/this one |
| fraa |
| Frau |
| woman |
Two tense/aspects are morphologically distinguished, present tense and preterite. Use of the preterite is found almost exclusively with strong verbs, i.e. verbs involving ablaut.
The other tenses are formed with auxiliaries: Perfect, Pluperfect, Futur I and Futur II. Perfect and preterite are used interchangeably. Pluperfect expresses anteriority in the past. Futur II is mainly used for epistemic statements about past events (cf. German: Er wird wohl wieder nicht da gewesen sein. He has probably not attended again.)
| wèèr-n |
| wèèr -nd |
| ge-wur -n |
| wèèr -∅ |
| wèr -sd |
| wèr-d |
| wèèr -n |
| wèèr -d |
| wèèr -n |
The suffixes are sometimes assimilated to the stem, as can be seen from hàm, `to have'.
Agreement with the subject is indicated as follows:
| wurd-∅ |
| wurd-sd |
| wurd-e |
| wurd-n |
| wurd-ed |
| wurd-n |
Examples:
| gàngng |
| gegangen. |
| gone. |
| gesààd |
| gesagt. |
| said. |
Examples:
| fààrn |
| fahren. |
| go. |
| sei |
| sein. |
| be. |
| daad-∅ |
| daad-sd |
| daad-∅ |
| daad-n |
| daad-ed |
| daad-n |
example:
| ruich! |
| ruhig! |
| quiet! |
Example:
| gemàchd |
| gemacht? |
| made? |
| haar? |
| from? |
| now? |
| sààn. |
| say |
| all. |
Aſs t'r Niemeyer ſeine Schuſtern in de Kerch zur Trauer kefuͤhrt prengt aͤ Vugelſteller Vugel un hot Baͤden kratelirt iſs k'ſchaͤn d. 25. Oktober 1759. Clasthol kedruͤckt bey den Buchdrucker Wendeborn.
| only in the western dialect |
| literal: earth apple |
| literal: Anziehzeug |
| literal: Töpfchen |
| derived from French trottoir |
| literal: bird berry tree (rowanberry tree) |
| literal: God's acre |
| literal: little bring here tray |
| literal: midday meal |
| accordion |
| (get) dirty |
| not in northwest dialect |
| Literal: einsacken |
| literal: at the end |
| from English |
| but, indeed, finally, quite |
| also in expressions |
| this year |
| literal: home |
| literal: hüben und drüben |
| here and there |
| now |
| to here |
| together |
English does not have a specialized form to affirm negative questions, unlike French ( si), Dutch ( jawel) or German ( doch). Erzgebirgisch uses Ujuu! , or sometimes Ajuu! , (dt. "Doch!") in these contexts. For the negation of a question expecting a positive answer È(schà)! (dt. "Nein!") is used. This interjection is also used to express surprise, albeit with a different intonation.
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