Itzgründisch Dialect

Itzgründisch is an East Franconian dialect, which is spoken in the eponymous Itz Valley (German: ''Itzgrund'') and its tributaries of Grümpen, Effelder, Röthen/Röden, Lauter, Füllbach and Rodach, the valleys of the Neubrunn, Biber and the upper Werra and in the valley of Steinach. In the small language area, which extends from the Itzgrund in Upper Franconia to the southern side of the Thuringian Highlands, East Franconian still exists in the original form. Because of the remoteness of the area, this isolated by the end of the 19th century and later during the division of Germany, this language has kept many linguistic features to this day. Scientific study of the Itzgründisch dialect was made for the first time, in the middle of the 19th century, by the linguist August Schleicher.

Geographical Distribution

The zone of the Itzgründisch dialect includes south of the Rennsteig ridge in the district of Sonneberg, the eastern part of the district of Hildburghausen, the city and district of Coburg (the “Coburger Land”) and the northwestern part of the district of Lichtenfels.

In the west side of the dialect zone, the “''Südhennebergische Staffelung''” outh Henneberger Gradation, a linguistic term which runs through the district of Hildburghausen, separates Itzgründisch from Hennebergisch. It extends south of the city of Hildburghausen and continues along the zone's borders to Grabfeldisch (East Franconian) or further south to Lower Franconian, which is also spoken in Seßlach in the western part of the district of Coburg. South of the district of Coburg, Itzgründisch is mixed with the dialect of Bamberg. East of the Sonneberger (except Heinersdorf, which is already in the zone of the Upper Franconian dialect) and Coburger lands and east of Michelau in the district of Lichtenfels, the Itzgründisch-speaking area is bordered by its Upper Franconian counterpart.

Directly in the course of the Rennsteig over the crest of the Thuringian Highlands, there exists a narrow transition zone to the Thuringian dialect, which consists the more modern dialects, largely influenced by East Franconian, of the places around Sachsenbrunn and Lauscha, which use the Itzgründisch vocabulary.

The zone of the Itzgründisch dialect area was originally the territories of the historic rulers, the Pflege Coburg and the Benedictine Banz Abbey.

Speakers

On 31 December 2010, in the dialect zone of Itzgründisch, 41,076 speakers were living in the town of Coburg while 84,129 were residing in the district of Coburg, with 40,745 more in the district of Hildburghausen; 22,791 in the district of Lichtenfels; and (minus the estimated number of non-Itzgründisch-speakers) about 50,000 inhabitants in the district of Sonneberg. In the town of Lichtenfels, which lies on the south bank of the Main River, where its dialect has historically been mixed with the dialects of Bamberg and the Itz Valley, 20,555 residents were counted. While respective variants of Itzgründisch are spoken in the rural villages throughout the area, the proportion of non-Itzgründisch-speaking residents is much greater in the cities. A conservative estimate puts the number of the native speakers of Itzgründisch at about 225,000 speakers.

The local dialects dominate in the transitional zone at the Rennsteig, where they are spoken by most of the approximately 13,000 inhabitants in everyday life, except in the town of Neuhaus am Rennweg.

Features

The grammar of Itzgründisch basically follows the rules of the East Franconian dialect. The uniqueness of Itzgründisch compared with other German dialects is in increasingly obsolete forms and diphthongs of Middle High German that are common in everyday speech.

* Around Sonneberg and Neustadt bei Coburg the diphthongs iä, ue and üä are used, for example: ''nicht'' ot= , ''Beet'' ed= , ''Ofen'' ven= , ''Vögel'' irds= . The pronunciation of the double consonant, ''-rg'' is changed to ''-ch'' if it follows the vowel, for example: Sonneberg = , ''ärgern'' o anger= and ''morgen'' orning= . Other diphthongs exist in the following words, for example: ''Brot'' read= “''Bruad''”, ''Hosen'' ants= “''Huasn''”, ''Hasen'' ares= “''Housn''”, ''heißen'' o be called= “''heaßn''” or ''schön'' eautiful= “''schööä''”.
*
* Sentences are often formed with auxiliary verbs such as ''mögen'' o like ''wollen'' o want or wish ''machen'' o make ''tun'' o door ''können'' o be ableand with the past participle. (''Das Kind schreit.'' he child cries. = “''Des Kindla dud schrein.''” or “''Des Kindla ka fei g´schrei.''”)
*
* The past participle is almost always used to construct the sentence with the auxiliary verbs ''sein'' o beor ''haben'' o have Example: ''Da gingen wir hinein/Da sind wir hineingegangen.'' s we walked inside / As we went inside= “''Dou sä´me neig´anga.''” In the north side of the dialect zone, however, the differences in the changes of grammatical tenses and verbs are more noticeable. They are known in the Thuringian places such as Judenbach

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