Swabian (Schwäbisch), a dialect of High German spoken in the region Swabia. Swabia covers much of Germany's southwestern Land (state) of Baden-Württemberg (including the capital Stuttgart and in the rural area known as the Swabian Jura) and in the southwest of the Land Bavaria.

The dialect ranges from a 'standard' Swabian, spoken in Stuttgart, 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.

True Swabian, with its nasal intonations and grammatical adjustments to common words, is known for being difficult for speakers of Standard German to understand. As well, Swabian contains vocabulary that differs altogether from Standard German (eg. 'jam' in Standard German is Marmelade while in Swabian it becomes G'saelz).

Characteristics

Schaffe, schaffe, Häusle baue.

Die schwäbischen Dialekte unterscheiden sich z.T. erheblich. Besonders charakteristisch ist die Unterscheidung nach den Formen des Partizips Perfekt von "sein" in gwä (gewesen) und gsi (gewesen). Die Gsi-Gruppe ist sprachgeschichtlich näher mit dem Schweizerdeutsch und dem Alemannischen verwandt. Insbesondere in der Gsi-Gruppe sind noch einige wenige Relikte aus der Keltischen Sprache vorhanden (z.B. keja für fallen).

Further characteristics (in comparison to High German) include:

• the so-called „halbe Diphthongierung“ (das heißt Doppelvokale werden hörbar nacheinander gesprochen)
• a general tendency to nasalize
• the initial "k" is nasalized (e.g. "Kinder" (children) is pronounced "Khinder")
• the ending "-et" for verbs in the 3rd person plural (the last two are both also characteristics of of Low Alemmanic)
• the pronounciation of "s" before consenants as "sch" (e.g. "Fest (party) is pronounced as "Fescht")
• the diminutive ending "-le" (sehr kurz gesprochen, z.B. Haus – Häusle) and for plurals "-lâ" (e.g.. Spätzla)
• simplified conjugation (alle Personen Plural end with -"et")

Swabian dialect writers

• Sebastian Sailer (1714-1777)
• August Lämmle
• Sebastian Blau

External links

• The Swabian-English dictionary