The Amstetten dialect is a
Central Bavarian
Central or Middle Bavarian form a subgroup of Bavarian dialects in large parts of Austria and the German state of Bavaria along the Danube river, on the northern side of the Eastern Alps. They are spoken in the ' Old Bavarian' regions of Upper ...
dialect
A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...
spoken in the Austrian town of
Amstetten. It is a variant of the
Mostviertel dialect.
Phonology
Vowels
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 ( in narrow transcription), 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 ( in narrow transcription), two-thirds the distance between and . The remaining are
near-close ( in narrow transcription), 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
Lower Austria ( , , abbreviated LA or NÖ) is one of the nine states of Austria, located in the northeastern corner of the country. Major cities are Amstetten, Lower Austria, Amstetten, Krems an der Donau, Wiener Neustadt and Sankt Pölten, which ...
. The open series has historically developed from earlier diphthongs that are still preserved in
Upper Austria
Upper Austria ( ; ; ) is one of the nine States of Austria, states of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, and Salzburg (state), Salzbur ...
n dialects (e.g. Lower Austrian /dætn/ vs. Upper Austrian /daɛtn/ 'to point'). The dialect of
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
shares with Lower Austrian dialects the monophthongization of these diphthongs, but has conflated the and series and thus only distinguishes four vowel heights.
References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Amstetten Dialect
Languages of Austria
Bavarian language