Pronunciation [keʁçʁœətʃ plɑt] Glottolog None | ||
Language family Indo-EuropeanGermanicWest GermanicHigh GermanCentral GermanWest Central GermanCentral FranconianRipuarian languageKerkrade dialect | ||
Kerkrade dialect (natively Kirchröadsj Plat or Kirchröadsj, Standard Dutch: Kerkraads, Standard German: Kerkrader Platt) is a Ripuarian dialect spoken in Kerkrade (Netherlands) and Herzogenrath (Germany). It is spoken in all social classes, but the variety spoken by younger people is somewhat closer to Standard Dutch.
Contents
Vocabulary
The Kerkrade dialect has many loanwords from Standard German, a language that used to be used in school and church. However, not all German loanwords are used by every speaker.
An example sentence in the Kerkrade dialect is Jód èse en drinke hilt lief en zieël tsezame, which means "eating and drinking well keeps one healthy". The Standard Dutch equivalent of that sentence is Goed eten en drinken houdt de mens gezond.
Vowels
Consonants
In contrast to Standard Dutch, but like other varieties of Ripuarian, the Kerkrade dialect was partially affected by the High German consonant shift. For instance, the former /t/ became an affricate /t͡s/ in word-initial and word-final positions, before historical /l/ and /r/ as well as when doubled. Thus, the word for "two" is twee in Standard Dutch, but tswai in the Kerkrade dialect.
Pitch accent
As the neighbouring Limburgish dialects, the Kerkrade dialect features phonemic pitch accent, which contains two tonemes: stoottoon (denoted by a superscript ⟨¹⟩) and sleeptoon (denoted by superscript ⟨²⟩). There are minimal pairs, for example moer /muːʁ¹/ 'wall' - moer /muːʁ²/ 'carrot'. The syllables with stoottoon are pronounced shorter than those with the sleeptoon.