Re: Questions about German Dialects

On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:14:21 +0200, taliesin the storyteller
<taliesin-conlang@...> wrote:

>Well, the most popular suffix in Thuringian is the diminutive, -le. They
>put it on *everything*! So Krista-le goes to scchool-le and reads in the
>book-le-s etc.
Thuringian is *that* southern influenced?! Usually, the -le diminutive is
characteristic for Schwäbisch, Allemannisch and Schwiitzerdüütsch (however
they're called in English).

>t., who thinks spätsle is a really great form of pasta, and schorle an
>excellent idea on hot summer days.
Spätzle is indeed a diminutive of "Spatz" (sparrow). I'm not so sure about
and rather doubt "Schorle", which is wine or fruit juice (usually apple
juice) with much mineral water, is the diminutive of "Schor". I don't know
"Schor" -- J. Wust? Christian Thalmann? The Duden about orthography (Vol. 1)
only lists "Schorle". The Duden about ethymology (Vol. 7) says "Schorle" is
a shortening of "Schorlemorle", wich appeared first in the 18th century as
"Schurlemurle" in Lower Bavaria as name for a mix of wine and mineral water.
The word is of uncertain origin.

I'd like to help with what differences there are between standard German,
Franconian and Thuringian, but I don't know these dialects good enough.
The only thing I can say about this is that our preacher comes from the
Nuremberg area and uses [4] instead of [R] everywhere. And there's the
typical {voiced stop} + {nasal} clusters at the *beginning* of words, mostly
"g-" from the participle marker "ge-": gemacht [g@"mAxt] -> g'macht
["g_0mAxt]. And of course some typical southern words, though I can't think
of some offhand.

Carsten

Reply