German dialects – Pfälzisch

After having covered low German (see bottom of this post for those three) let’s look at middle German dialects. As before, there are too many variations to mention them all, so I have chosen three, starting with Pfälzisch, or Palantine German, as it’s called in English. According to Wikipedia “Palatine German or Pfälzisch is a West Franconian dialect of German which is spoken in the Upper Rhine Valley roughly in an area between the cities of Zweibrücken, Kaiserslautern, Alzey, Worms, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Speyer, Landau, Wörth am Rhein and the border to the Alsace region in France but also beyond.” The same article also has a few nice examples of Palantine German words and sentences and what they mean in High German. Have a look to find out, for example, what Hoschd ach Hunga? means! (1)

I found some websites where you can learn some Pfälzisch:

Zurseite.de has a “course” for beginners. Click on the right picture next to the text ‘Sprachkurs Pfälzisch – Deutsch’ where you can also listen to the words.

Can you guess what “äh Draachedutt” is? (2)

Pälzische Texte vumm Walter Rupp is a great site if you fancy reading some Pfälzisch text. I wonder, if you can work out what “Schbämm-Imääls” are ☺ (3)

And here are some videos. The first one has lots of interesting vocabulary:

And the next one is part of a series, this one is episode 1:

Did you miss the first three parts of my German dialects posts?

Here they are again:

German dialects – Hamburgerisch and Ostfriesisch

German dialects – das Grafschafter Platt

German dialects – Mecklenburgisch

Answers:

(1) Are you also hungry?

(2)  eine Tragetüte – a carrier bag

(3) spam emails