Re: CHAT: Contractions in colloquial German (was: Re: articles)

On Tue, 1 Feb 2005 21:38:01 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:

>You don't have _'s_ for _das_? In Aachen they have it whenever possible
>(which is not to say they refrain from it when it's impossible!), and I've
>heard it or heard it reported from other bits of Germany and Switzerland too.
>
>(By "impossible" I mean when it creates initial consonantal clusters no sane
>human would want to associate with, as in _'s Schwimmen_ [sSvImn=].)
:)

Don't say that! You might offense those Swiss people who do pronounce it
that way /'sSv\ym@/ (though I guess they'd rather be proud of it).

In my dialect, however, the regular form of the definite neuter article is
/ts/, not /s/ (whereas the full form /ta(:)s/ is a demonstrative).
Therefore, I say /'tsSvYm:@/. Note that the onset of this is different from
the onset of /tSvYm:/ 'the fungi' and /tsvYS:@/ 'between'.


I'm not getting into Alemannic contractions...

...speaking of which reminds me of the intrusive n of Alemannic dialects,
which might be interesting to some. Most Alemannic dialects have dropped the
final n. Therefore, it's not /vi:r 'Sla:f@n/ 'we sleep', but /mI:r
'Sla:f:@/. If a vowel follows, an n reappears: /mI:r 'Sla:f:@-n-Its/ 'we
sleep now' (there are no glottal stops). This n appears also in places where
the non n-dropping varieties of German don't have an n, compare /Iç 'Sla:f@
jEtst/ to /I 'Sla:f:@-n-Its/ 'I sleep now'. Its use is however restricted,
and in a lot of cases it's decreasing in the urban varieties.

What other linking consonants have been devised?

kry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

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