Kleverlandish
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Kleverlandish ( or ; ) is a group of
Low Franconian In historical linguistics, historical and comparative linguistics, Low Franconian is a linguistic category used to classify a number of historical and contemporary West Germanic languages, West Germanic Variety (linguistics), varieties closely r ...
dialects spoken on both sides of the Dutch-German border along the
Meuse The Meuse or Maas is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea from the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. It has a total length of . History From 1301, the upper ...
and
Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...
rivers.


Extent and terminology

Kleverlandish varieties are spoken in the Netherlands in the northernmost part of Dutch Limburg, in the northeasternmost part of
North Brabant North Brabant ( ; ), also unofficially called Brabant, Dutch Brabant or Hollandic Brabant, is a province in the south of the Netherlands. It borders the provinces of South Holland and Gelderland to the north, Limburg to the east, Zeeland to ...
( Land van Cuijk), and in the southeastern part of
Gelderland Gelderland ( , ), also known as Guelders ( ) in English, is a Provinces of the Netherlands, province of the Netherlands, located in the centre-east of the country. With a total area of of which is water, it is the largest province of the Nethe ...
(around
Nijmegen Nijmegen ( , ; Nijmeegs: ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and the ninth largest of the Netherlands as a whole. Located on the Waal River close to the German border, Nijmegen is one of the oldest cities in the ...
and around Zevenaar and 's-Heerenberg in the Liemers region), and in Germany in the districts of Cleves and
Wesel Wesel () is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany. It is the capital of the Wesel (district), Wesel district. Geography Wesel is situated at the confluence of the Lippe River and the Rhine. Division of the city Suburbs of Wesel i ...
in northwestern
North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia or North-Rhine/Westphalia, commonly shortened to NRW, is a States of Germany, state () in Old states of Germany, Western Germany. With more than 18 million inhabitants, it is the List of German states by population, most ...
. To the northeast, Kleverlandish borders on the
Low Saxon Low Saxon (), also known as West Low German () are a group of Low German dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and southern Denmark (in North Schleswig by parts of the German-speaking minority). It is one of two di ...
speech area, its western border is the diphthongisation line. Traditionally, its southern extent bordering on the South Low Franconian dialect group (commonly called "Limburgish" in Belgium and the Netherlands) is defined by the Uerdingen line (the ''ik''-''ich''-
isogloss An isogloss, also called a heterogloss, is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistics, linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Isoglosses are a ...
), but many Dutch and German scholars place the boundary further to the north based on wider criteria than the ''ik''-''ich''-isogloss. Originally, the term ''Kleverländisch'' referred only to the dialects in the German part of the speech area, which are also called ''Niederrheinsch'' ('Low Rhenish') in traditional German dialectology. The dialects on the Dutch side were first classified as a distinct group by te Winkel (1898) (as "Saxon-East Franconian") and Van Ginneken (1917) ("Guelderish-Limburgish"). The close affinity between these dialect areas had long been recognized by Dutch and German scholars; but it was the Belgian dialectologist Jan Goossens who first extended the scope of the term "Kleverlandish" to include all varieties on both sides of the border.


Characteristics

Kleverlandish is characterized by several conservative features, such as: * Retention of ''-al-''/''-ol-'' before consonants (e.g. Kleverlandish ''ald'' 'old'; in most Low Franconian dialects, ''-l-'' is vocalized in this environment (Standard Dutch ''oud''), while Low Saxon dialects retains the ''-l-'' but merge the vowels to ''-o-'' (Low Saxon ''old'')) * Retention of historically long high vowels (diphthongized in most Low Franconian dialects to the west, e.g. Kleverlandish ''is'' vs. Standard Dutch < *īs). A typical West Low Franconian feature is the fronting of /uː/ to /y(ː)/ (e.g. ''hüs'' 'house' < *hūs) which however did not fully radiate into the German area of Kleverlandish, where in many areas it affects only part of the vocabulary.


Status

In much of the Kleverlandish speech area in both the Netherlands and Germany, speakers are shifting from Kleverlandish to regional colloquial forms of the respective national languages, Dutch and German, with a higher degree of decline of dialect usage in Germany than in the Netherlands. In Dutch Limburg, Kleverlandish varieties spoken within the province are included in the official recognition of
Limburgish Limburgish ( or ; ; also Limburgian, Limburgic or Limburgan) refers to a group of South Low Franconian Variety (linguistics), varieties spoken in Belgium and the Netherlands, characterized by their distance to, and limited participation ...
as a regional language (even though they do not belong to Limburgish in a dialectological sense). Official recognition does not extend to other Dutch provinces, nor to Germany.


Other classifications

In the widely reproduced dialect map by , Kleverlandish dialects in the Netherlands are included in the large central-southern dialect group, but divided over two subgroups: varieties in Gelderland are assigned to the South Guelderish subgroup (which also includes dialects spoken in the southwest of Gelderland which have taken part in the Hollandic-Brabantian diphthongisation), while Kleverlandish varieties in North Brabant and Limburg are included in the North Brabant–North Limburg subgroup. In Heeringa (2004), Kleverlandish dialects in the Netherlands are assigned to two different major dialects groups: the Gelderland varieties are included in the Central Dutch group, while varieties in the Land van Cuijk and northern Limburg are included in the Limburg group.


Notes


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References

* * * * * * * * * * * {{Germanic languages Low Franconian languages Languages of Germany Languages of the Netherlands Dutch dialects German dialects Culture of Gelderland Culture of Limburg (Netherlands) Culture of North Brabant North Rhine-Westphalia Rhineland