A Guide to Swabian

2. Swabian in Context

Swabian derived its name from the former tribe of the Suebi who “occupied the area between the Upper Rhine and the Upper Danube in the first century AD (Ross 337) 1 .” It is the language of the Southwestern area of Germany that covers all of the former kingdom of Württemberg and parts of Baden (now the two parts that make up the Bundesland Baden-Württemberg). In the east it also extends into Bavaria to about as far as the Lech River, the western border is drawn by the massif of the Black Forest. Swabian emerged from Allemanic, the Upper German dialect that is spoken in the southern areas of Germany that border Switzerland.

Like German, Swabian itself is very versatile, too. Within the dialect the literature usually distinguishes between colloquial, regional and basic dialect forms, the colloquial version being the “standard variety” of the dialect, the regional dialects more general subdivisions, and the basic dialect a form that will be different from village to village, and considerably so. The two major regional dialects within the Swabian speaking area are normally characterized as the gwä-dialect vs. the gsi-dialect after the different forms of the past participle of ‘to be’ (in stead of ‘gewesen’ from ‘sein’). The latter is closer to Allemannic both linguistically and geographically, the former, however, is the regional form this guide is describing, mostly because the author and therefore also the speech samples are from this variety.

1 Most general facts are taken from Ross, Charles. The Dialects of Modern German. London: Routledge,

1990.

2

3. Speech Samples

As was mentioned before, this guide will be accompanied by a number of speech files that will make it easier to grasp the phonemes and the dialect as a whole than mere phonetic description can. The files were recorded at Stony Brook University by the author himself, who is a native but not a very active speaker of Swabian. The samples should give at least a good approximation of how Swabian sounds. Further speech samples can be found on a webpage published by NAEGER of the University of Marburg that is dedicated to German dialects in general. There, the reader will find realizations of the Standard German sentence “Du bist noch nicht groß genug, um eine Flasche Wein auszutrinken. Du musst zuerst noch wachsen und älter werden“ (You are not big enough yet to empty a bottle of wine. You will first have to grow and get older) in three different Swabian dialect forms and he will also be able to compare it with the sentence’s realization of a great variety of speakers of other German dialects.

The longer speech file on the accompanying CD is taken from Ross (345) and is supposed to give a general feeling for the dialect 2 – it will be most interesting to listen to the two features of Swabian that are probably the most prominent in comparison with Standard German: an overall nasalization (the literature does not seem to be able to agree upon whether nasalization can also be phonemic in Swabian or not) and diphthong- ization. To have this direct comparison, the reader can read out loud the following paragraph which is the Standard German equivalent of the Swabian excerpt that follows

2 The reader will have to forgive the fact that the account that was originally spoken by an older woman is

rendered in a young man’s voice in the samp le

3

below in pseudo-phonetic transcription as given by the author; the English translation

follows at the end:

Standard German

Mein Mann ist noch nicht lange gestorben. Seither bin ich immer ganz allein. Neulich ist auch mein Schwiegervater von Ostelsheim bei mir gewesen und hat gesagt: Dein Hannes sollte eben noch da sein! Da hat er recht gehabt, dann wäre es anders: Auf unseren Äckern hat müssen alles haarakkurat' sein, das könnte Ihnen heute noch jeder sagen, aber seit ich allein bin, komme ich den Dingen nicht mehr nach. Man wird eben auch alt.

Swabian

Mae’ mann isch no ned lang gschdorb. Sithäär benne emmr ganz loe’. Doo nilich isch ao mae’ schwiigrfaddr von Oschtls bi mr gwäs ond hot gsagt: Dae' Hannes sodd äbb noo doo sae’! Doo hodr rächd ghet 3 , noo wäärs andrscht. Uf onsre äggr hod mis älls en ordnong sae', des kend eene hid no jeedr saag, abbr sid e loe' ben, komme dem sach nemme ällm nooch. Mr wird äbb ao ald;

English

My husband has not been dead for long. Since then I am always quite alone. Recently my father-in-law from Ostelsheim visited me and said, 'Your John should have been there just now!' He was right, it would have been different then. In our fields everything had to be absolutely accurate, everyone today could still tell that, but since I've been on my own,

I don't keep up with things anymore. You get old.

3 I would have transcribed this {k h 0t] as will be seen below

4