South Tyrolean German or South Tyrolese ( or ; or ; ) is a

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 northern Italian province of

South Tyrol South Tyrol ( , ; ; ), officially the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South Tyrol, is an autonomous administrative division, autonomous provinces of Italy, province in northern Italy. Together with Trentino, South Tyrol forms the autonomo ...

. It is generally considered to be a sub-variety of

Southern Bavarian Southern Bavarian or South Bavarian, is a cluster of Upper German dialects of the Bavarian group. They are primarily spoken in Tyrol (i.e. the Austrian federal state of Tyrol and the Italian province of South Tyrol), in Carinthia and in t ...

, and has many similarities with other South German varieties, in particular with varieties of Austrian Standard German. It may develop its own standard variety of German, though currently is linguistically heteronomous to German Standard German (see One Standard German Axiom for discussion). What differentiates South Tyrolean German from other Bavarian varieties is primarily the influence of

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

and Ladin on its lexicon.

Characteristics

69.15% of the inhabitants of

speak German as their mother tongue. South Tyrolean tends to be used at home or in informal situations, while standard German in its Austrian variant prevails at school, work and for official purposes. As such, this is a medial

diglossia In linguistics, diglossia ( , ) is where two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled "L" or "low" v ...

, since the

spoken language A spoken language is a form of communication produced through articulate sounds or, in some cases, through manual gestures, as opposed to written language. Oral or vocal languages are those produced using the vocal tract, whereas sign languages ar ...

is mainly the dialect, whereas the

written language A written language is the representation of a language by means of writing. This involves the use of visual symbols, known as graphemes, to represent linguistic units such as phonemes, syllables, morphemes, or words. However, written language is ...

is mainly the

Austrian German Austrian German (), Austrian Standard German (ASG), Standard Austrian German (), Austrian High German (), or simply just Austrian (), is the variety of Standard German written and spoken in Austria and South Tyrol. It has the highest prestige ( ...

variety of

Standard German Standard High German (SHG), less precisely Standard German or High German (, , or, in Switzerland, ), is the umbrella term for the standard language, standardized varieties of the German language, which are used in formal contexts and for commun ...

. The South Tyrolean dialect is related to Bairisch. It preserves its specific traits and is basically

homogeneous Homogeneity and heterogeneity are concepts relating to the uniformity of a substance, process or image. A homogeneous feature is uniform in composition or character (i.e., color, shape, size, weight, height, distribution, texture, language, i ...

with Northern Tyrolean variants. However it has absorbed some Italian or Italian-based terms, especially for administrative purposes (for example "driving license", "General Practitioner", etc.) and some types of food. These terms are seldom present in

Vocabulary

References

{{Germanic languages German dialects Culture of South Tyrol Languages of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol