Amstetten dialect
The Amstetten dialect is a Central Bavarian dialect spoken in the Austrian town of Amstetten, [Lower Austria|Amstetten]. It is a variant of the Mostviertel dialect.
Phonology
Vowels
[Image:Amstetten Bavarian vowel chart.svg|thumb|upright=1.13|Monophthongs of the Amstetten dialect on a vowel chart, based on formant values in, cited in ]The Amstetten dialect is very unusual among the world's language varieties in that it can be analyzed as featuring five phonemic vowel heights. Phonetically speaking, the vowels typically transcribed with in IPA constitute a series of open-mid vowels, one-third the distance between the open central and the close in the formant vowel space. The vowels transcribed with and also differ from the cardinal vowels; the first series is close-mid, two-thirds the distance between and. The remaining are near-close, a series of very high vowels that approach in their articulation. Among those, the back is somewhat more central than the neighboring and.
This rich vowel system is also found in most other dialects of Lower Austria. The open series has historically developed from earlier diphthongs that are still preserved in Upper Austrian dialects. The dialect of Vienna shares with Lower Austrian dialects the monophthongization of these diphthongs, but has conflated the and series and thus only distinguishes four vowel heights.