Getelands

Getelands (, ) or West Getelands ( , ) is a South Brabantian dialect spoken in the eastern part of Flemish Brabant as well as the western part of Limburg in Belgium. It is a transitional dialect between South Brabantian and West Limburgish.

The dialect is named after the river Gete. It is an endangered language.

Characteristics

The first person singular pronoun is typically the Limburgish ''ich'', instead of Brabantian/Standard Dutch ''ik''. The diminutive forms are formed as in Limburgish, using the umlaut. In Truierlands (sometimes called ''East Getelands''), the plural is also formed by using the umlaut ( vs. ), in contrast to Getelands plurals formed the Standard Dutch way ( vs. ). Both dialects share the lack of pitch accent found in most varieties of Limburgish.

Word accent in the Orsmaal-Gussenhoven dialect shows phonetic features of accent 2 (the ''dragging tone'') of the neighboring West Limburgish dialects.

Phonology

This section shows the phonology of the Orsmaal-Gussenhoven dialect, which is spoken in the Linter municipality. The dialect of Melkwezer has a similar phonology, except for the fact that the diphthong is realized with a mid onset: .

* is restricted to word-initial position, and occurs only in loanwords from French. It tends to either devoice to or be affricated to .
* The exact place of articulation of varies:
** Velar before and after back vowels and, in the case of , also when it is preceded by a back vowel in an intervocalic position between stressed and unstressed syllable.
** Palatal before and after front vowels and, in the case of , also after .
* may be dropped by some speakers.
* has a few possible realizations, none of which are uvular. This stands in contrast to most varieties of Limburgish, where is a uvular trill or fricative.
** Apical trill or an apical fricative before a stressed vowel in word-initial syllables.
** Intervocalically and in the onset after a consonant, it may be a tap .
** Word-final is highly variable; the most frequent variants are an apical fricative trill , an apical fricative and an apical non-sibilant affricate . The last two variants tend to be voiceless () in pre-pausal position.
** The sequence can be vocalized to or .

* Peters gives six more diphthongs, which are . He gives no evidence for their phonemic status. As Brabantian dialects are known for both diphthongizing and especially monophthongizing , the distinction between the closing diphthongs and the monophthongs is ignored elsewhere in the article, with being used as cover symbols for both.
* The open central vowels are phonologically back in that they trigger the velar allophones of and .
* Among the long rounded vowels, before within the same syllable vary between monophthongs and centering diphthongs , which often are disyllabic (with the first portion realized as a closing diphthong). At least in the case of and , the tongue movement may be so slight that they are sometimes better described as lip-diphthongs . In the same environment, can be disyllabic . For the sake of simplicity, those allophones are transcribed in phonetic transcription.
* There are two additional short tense vowels and , which are tenser (higher and perhaps also more rounded) than the native short (with the latter being phonetically). They appear only in a few French loanwords. Their status as phonemes separate from the long tense and is unclear; Peters treats them as marginal phonemes.
* occurs only before alveolar consonants. Phonetically, it varies between .
* Stressed short vowels cannot occur in open syllables. Exceptions to this rule are high-frequency words like ''wa'' 'what' and loanwords from French.

References

Bibliography

* Belemans, R.; Keulen, R. (2004): ''Taal in stad en land. Belgisch-Limburgs'': 25
* Belemans, R.; Kruijsen, J.; Van Keymeulen, J. (1998): Gebiedsindeling van de zuidelijk-Nederlandse dialecten, Taal en Tongval jg 50,
online
* Goossens, J. (1965): Die Gliederung des Südniederfränkischen, in Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter, 30: 79-94.
* Pauwels, J.L.; Morren, L. (1960): De grens tussen het Brabants en Limburgs in België. In: Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung 27. blz. 88-96.
*
* Stevens, A. (1978): Struktuur en historische ondergrond van het Haspengouws taallandschap (Mededelingen van de Vereniging voor Limburgse Dialect- en Naamkunde, Nr. 9). Hasselt
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Dutch dialects
Languages of Belgium
Brabant