Eastphalian language


Eastphalian, or Eastfalian, is a Low German language spoken in southeastern parts of Lower Saxony and western parts of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany.

Geographical extent

The language area between the Weser and Elbe rivers stretches from the Lüneburg Heath in the north to the Harz mountain range and Weser Uplands in the south. It comprises the Hanover Region, Brunswick and Calenberg Land as well as the Magdeburg Börde, including the cities of Hanover, Braunschweig, Hildesheim, Göttingen and Magdeburg. It roughly corresponds with the historic region of Eastphalia.

Classification

Eastphalian as a separate dialect was determined by 19th century linguistics, tracing it back to Old Saxon variants spoken in eastern parts of the medieval stem duchy of Saxony. Towards the Elbe region in the southeast, the language area is increasingly influenced by the High German consonant shift.

Features

The most prominent characteristic in Eastphalian is the object pronouns mek and dek in contrast to mi and di in Northern Lower Saxon, respectively for High German mir and mich resp. dir and dich), as well as öhne, ösch/''össek and jöck. Although Eastphalian agrees with many Low German dialects in that the dative has coincided with the accusative in the forms mentioned, its peculiarity is shown by the fact that the accusative has prevailed over the dative in all of these forms. In Eastphalian, an accusative of the first person plural has been preserved with the form üsch and southern Eastphalian össek.
Much like in most Dutch Low Saxon variants, the e-apocope, i.e. the omission of the -e at the end of the word, as took place in North Lower Saxon, was entirely absent in Eastphalian. Thus, the ablaut -e in words like Sprake and Wiele remains and is not dropped. Furthermore, the -e is also preserved in nouns in the nominative case, where High German no longer has them either, such as in Harte, Frue, Herre, Bäre. The same is true for many adjectives, such as dicke and wisse and substantivizing endings such as -unge and -nisse, as well as for the older form -ig /, which developed from Middle Low German -inge. The -e ending has also survived for nouns in the dative case. Thus, for example, uppen Felle.
Another feature of Eastphalian is the residual preservation of the prefix ge- as e- in the participle II of verbs; since this prefix has also been lost in the very Northern regions of Eastphalia, e. g., for example, in Celle its wään is opposed to southern ewään, or ewest. However, this prefix is dropped if the previous word already ends in a schwa like -e or -er. Again, this is very similar to most Dutch Low Saxon varieties classified as Westfalian.
Another striking difference between Eastphalian and all other Low German dialects is the absence of vowel lengthening in open syllable before -el, -en, -er in the following syllable, e. g. Eastphalian Löppel, betten, Pepper versus Northern Low Saxon Läpel, bäten, Päper.
Eastphalian also takes its own position in equalizing Old Saxon phonetic positions, especially in reducing vowels distinguished in open syllables, by simplifying more than Westphalian, but not going as far as the core area of Northern Lower Saxon. Despite the diversity of the sounds in detail, most of the Eastphalian dialects thus have a common sound system..
Another thing to mention is that prepositions in most of Eastphalian do not contain an umlaut. These include for, unner and over, as opposed to Northern Lower Saxon för, ünner and över''.

Subdivisions

  • Elbe Eastphalian
  • Göttingisch-Grubenhagensch
  • Central Eastphalian is the Eastphalian subdialect spoken in a large area surrounding Braunschweig and Hanover.
  • * Hildesheimsch
  • * Hannoversch
  • * Calenbergsch
  • * Einbecksch
  • * Bronswieksch