Erzgebirgisch - Language Area and History

Language Area and History

As the following sections will show, Erzgebirgisch is very close to Upper Saxon but also has commonalities with Upper German dialects.

As of today, the Erzgebirgisch area comprises roughly the districts of Mittweida (southern area), Stollberg, Central Ore Mountain District, Annaberg-Buchholz, Freiberg (South) and Aue-Schwarzenberg. Some more speakers live in the town of Lichtenstein, in the Chemnitzer Land district.

Another community live in the Upper Harz Mountains in the Clausthal-Zellerfeld region (Lower Saxony). Their ancestors were miners and emigrated in the 16th century. Here it is referred to as the Upper Harz dialect.

Up to 1929, Erzgebirgisch was also spoken in other parts of Mittweida and Freiberg, in Chemnitz, Zwickau and in the extreme West of the Weißeritzkreis, but these areas are now dominated by Thuringian–Upper Saxon dialects.

Until 1945, the bordering Sudetenland also harbored some Erzgebirgisch speakers, namely in Kaaden-Duppau, in whose dialect an anthology of words, proverbs and anecdotes was published (see references). After World War II these speakers had to leave Czechoslovakia and settled down all over the FRG and the GDR. This meant that dialect usage was reduced to the family homes, entailing a shift to the local varieties of their new home towns.

No official attempts to create an orthography have been made, nevertheless there are countless short stories, poems and songs written in Erzgebirgisch. The Sächsischer Heimatverein guidelines to writing in Erzgebirgisch were established in 1937, but are by and large not respected by the majority of authors. This means that linguistic analysis of this dialect has to be done in a field work setting with native speakers. An additional threat to Erzgebirgisch is the popular misconception that Erzgebirgisch was a hillbilly variety of Saxonian, which does not help the conservation efforts.

Erzgebirgisch is classified as a Central German dialect in linguistics, but also includes Upper German features.

Many of these languages show a tendency to substitute the German verbal prefix er- by der- (Erzg. and Bair.) or ver- (Bair and Suabian). (e.g. westerzgeb. derschloong German ‚erschlagen‘, to slaughter derzeeln German ‚erzählen‘ to tell, to narrate).

Extended use of the particle fei is typical for Upper German and popular in Erzgebirgisch.

Furthermore, German corresponds to in the mentioned varieties (e.g. westerzgeb. huus ‚Hose‘), and German corresponds to

An in the coda, following a long vowel, is regularly deleted in Erzgebirgisch (e.g. Lichtenst. Huuschdee ‚Hohenstein‘. Rarely, this is also found with monosyllabic words with a short vowel, which undergo compensatory vowel lengthening in the process (e.g. Lichtenst. màà ‚Mann‘ man).

Another typical feature of Upper German is the apocope of schwa and /ɪ/ (e.g. Lichtenst. Reedlz ‚Rödlitz‘ )

The following table illustrates the similarities between Erzgebirgisch and Upper German dialects. We list Thuringian/Upper Saxon as a control parameter. An 'X' means that the feature is present in most subdialects, a 'x' means that it is only found in border areas.