The German-speaking world, with its distinct territorial divisions, its turbulent political history and its standard language—which emerged as a result of the intermingling of dialects—is characterised by a dialect landscape that is highly varied on a small scale. The earliest documented forms of the German language (Old High German, Old Low German) already exhibit the dialect continuum of High German–Central German–Low German that persists to this day. The relationship between local dialects, regional language and standard language (‘Hochsprache’)—which is particularly pronounced in the German-speaking world—emerged in the Early Modern period with the development of the German standard language (the language of the Lutheran Bible, chancery languages) as a compromise form drawn from all three German dialect areas, based on Central German. The first uses of the loanword ‘Dialektus’ also date from this period, joined by the neologism ‘Mundart’ coined by Philip von Zesen (1619–1689). The existence of regionally distinct ways of speaking, alongside the standard language – which was gaining ever greater ground as a point of contrast and taking over more and more functional domains – gave rise to both negative (social indicator, language barrier) and positive (homeland, identity) attitudes amongst speakers and assessments of dialects. At present, dialects and regional speech in the German-speaking world are characterised by (including media-driven) affirmation and popularity on the one hand, and by the decline and disappearance—particularly of local or ‘basic’ dialects—in the Middle and Low German-speaking regions in favour of speech varieties characterised by broader regional features (regional languages) on the other.

Scholarly research into dialects began in the 19th century. Among other works, the *Bayrisches Wörterbuch* by Johann Andreas Schmeller (1785–1852) was groundbreaking. By the beginning of the 20th century at the latest, most major dialect dictionary projects in the German-speaking world had been launched; after what were usually lengthy periods of work, they have now been completed (Rheinisches Wörterbuch, 1923–1971; Palatinate Dictionary, 1912–1998), though some remain unfinished to this day (e.g. Transylvanian-Saxon Dictionary, 1924 onwards). Another key task of dialectology has been, and remains, the compilation of dialect atlases. The seminal work is the *German Sprachatlas* (DSA), founded in 1876 by Georg Wenker (1852–1911). This, like many of the dialect dictionaries, includes the dialects of linguistic enclaves and settlement dialects beyond national and imperial borders. Lexical geography plays a special role in dialectology (e.g.: ‘Semmel’ – ‘Brötchen’ – ‘Schrippe’, ‘Tomate’ – ‘Paradeiser’, ‘Fleischer’ – ‘Metzger’).^[1] A defining feature of recent dialect research is the end of the primacy of classical grammatography, with its focus on phonology and morphology, and a shift towards sociolinguistic and pragmatolinguistic questions, with greater attention being paid to aspects such as regiolects, speaker attitudes, the relationship between dialect and standard language, and more recent diachronic developments.

‘Dialect’ (from the Greek διάλεκτος, also : ‘local dialect’, regionally: ‘Platt’^[2]) refers in linguistics to regionally distinct linguistic systems characterised by strong structural similarity to neighbouring systems, and which are not highly codified or standardised in writing (Bussmann).^[3] A defining feature is the contrastive interplay of divergence and convergence within a (constructed) overarching diasystem, commonly referred to as the ‘standard language’ or ‘high language’. The dialects of German thus exist in a relationship of tension with the German standard language, characterised situationally by (in some cases also subjectively perceived) distance and proximity. Dialectology, a sub-discipline of linguistics, deals with dialects, with its areas of study extending into all core areas of linguistic systems (phonetics/phonology, morphology, lexis, syntax, etc.) as well as language use research (sociolinguistics, pragmatics, conversational linguistics, etc.); the historical dimension of dialects is the subject of diachronic (historical) dialectology. As language varieties defined as diastratic, diaphasic, diasituative and diatopic (Goossens), dialects have a clearly marked social and situational component in addition to their regionally determined degree of regional colouring, which may be increasing or decreasing. Ideally, a dialect—as a geographically definable (areal) variety within a language —represents the linguistic-landscape phenomenon of the local dialect (basic dialect; as captured in dialectological local grammar); in practice, however, the term can also be used to describe large-scale areal phenomena of linguistic variation (regional languages: exemplified, for instance, in the major dialect dictionaries^[4] – the Rhenish Dictionary, the Prussian Dictionary, etc. – and language atlases), whereby regional language varieties form a continuum with numerous transitional stages and a greater or lesser number of dialectal features. Despite the abundance of dialectal literature available for individual dialect regions (e.g. Fritz Reuter for Low German), dialects are, from a linguistic-systematic perspective, defined by genuine orality. From a pragmatic perspective, dialects are furthermore tied to specific contexts of use, characterised by the factors of locality and social (speech) context. Speakers who have a fully developed language system at their disposal – complete native proficiency exists only with the additional mastery of the (written) standard variety as the language of the public sphere, politics and the media – can switch between different modes of speech (dialectal, regional, wider-regional, standard) depending on the communicative situation and its scope.^[5] Proficiency in one of the two poles of this scale may, however, be deficient at the idiolectal level. Furthermore, the functions of dialect differ in urban areas from those in rural and village speech communities, as in the latter the overarching standard language often plays a lesser role. This extension to various functional domains is most pronounced in the Upper German-speaking region; in Switzerland, High Alemannic Schwyzerdütsch has virtually the status of a national language. Finally, dialect – always in contrast to the standard language – has an inherent component of social status and prestige and, in German, even influences the use of the standard language itself, as speakers generally always articulate regional features that indicate their regional origin (even among speakers who have learnt German as a second language within the German-speaking world; cf. ‘Kiezdeutsch’; forensic linguistics also makes use of this distinctive feature of German); the only form free of regional characteristics is the German ‘stage pronunciation’ (Theodor Siebs), which is (partially) realised in the media.

Phonetics and phonology are traditionally regarded as the main criteria for distinguishing dialects from the standard variety or written language (standard language) of a given language. For German dialects, one of the main classification criteria is the diachronic phenomenon of the Second (High German) Sound Shift (2nd SS), which marks the separation of German from the West Germanic group; the extent to which this 2nd SP has taken place serves as the basis for the division into Upper German (obd., complete), Central German (md., partial) and Low German (nd., unshifted) dialects. The Upper and Central German linguistic areas are also grouped together under the term ‘High German’ (not to be confused with the term of the same name for the German standard language). In terms of consonant systems, the second language shift affects the series of plosives /p-t-k/, which in Upper German and, to some extent, in Central German become fricatives or affricates (co-articulated double consonants). This has given rise to characteristic series such as Upper German (and Standard German)‘Pfeffer’– Middle German‘Peffer’ – Lower German‘Peper’; High German and Middle German‘Apfel’– Middle German and Lower German‘Appel’; and Upper German and Middle German ‘Zeit’ – Lower German ‘Tid’. In the West Central German region, the ‘Rhenish Subject’ – a unique phenomenon in areal linguistics – has emerged as a result of the second language shift being implemented to varying degrees from south to north. In addition to the Second Language Shift, the phonological and morphological diversity of German dialects is based on distinguishing features in the vowel system, although monophthongisation and diphthongisation that arose in the late Middle Ages have not occurred in certain dialects (e.g. Bavarian:liab-guat-muaderas opposed to Standard Germanlieb(articulated as a monophthong)-gut-Mutter; Swiss Germanmin-husas opposed to Standard Germanmein-haus); in addition, there is the so-called ‘intra-German consonant weakening’ in the consonantal system.

The German dialect area emerged from the early medieval formation of empires through the unification of various Germanic tribes and large confederations (Franks, Saxons, Alemanni, Bavarians, etc.), which also form the basis of today’s dialect landscape; however, the individual dialects cannot be directly traced back to specific tribes, as the actual dialectal features only emerged after their dissolution within the Frankish imperial structure. Thus, today’s dialect boundaries reflect the medieval and early modern territorial dominions (which, in the German-speaking world, were characterised by being, in some cases, very fragmented). Dialect boundaries are determined by measuring the extent of dialectal features (isoglosses) and grouping them together. The thicker a cluster of isoglosses, the more clearly defined the dialect area. The most important isogloss in the German-speaking world is the so-called ‘Benrath Line’ (maken-machen), which marks the end of the range of the 2nd LV and separates the High German from the Low German language areas.

In the course of the high medieval expansion of German territory in Germania Slavica ( the German eastern settlements), the German-speaking world expanded considerably, particularly along the Baltic Sea as far as the Baltic states, into Silesia and into the outlying regions of Bohemia and Moravia.^[7] In addition, isolated settlements sprang up, particularly in south-eastern Europe, the Bohemian lands and Poland. This was followed by early modern territorial expansion in the Habsburg Empire and the settlement of Germans in the Russian Empire.

In an initial wave during the High Middle Ages, German settlers reached the following areas east of the Elbe and Saale rivers: (a) Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Eastern Pomerania, eastern Prussia, as well as (b) Transylvania, Spiš, Gottschee and other hospes settlements in Hungary. In the areas listed under (a), which had direct links to the Empire, autochthonous dialects (Bohemian, Moravian, Silesian, East Pomeranian, Prussian) based on North Bavarian–East Franconian (Bohemian), Thuringian–Saxon (Silesian) and Low German (Prussian) foundations. In the areas listed under (b), linguistic island dialects emerged.

The second wave of settlement served to repopulate territories in the early modern period following the Turkish Wars, on the initiative of the Habsburg emperors (Danube region) and the Russian tsars (Dnieper–Volga region). The Habsburgs, through three ‘Swabian migrations’ (Carolinian 1718–1737, Theresian 1749–1772, Josephine 1782–1787) and smaller follow-up settlement campaigns (Sathmar, ‘Landler’ in Transylvania), the Habsburgs settled Swabian Turkey, the Bačka, the Banat, as well as Slavonia and Syrmia with German immigrants. The settlers came mainly from western Central Germany and western Upper Germany (Rhine and Main Franconia, Lorraine, Alsace), but also from Swabia and Franconia, as well as from Bohemia, Inner Austria and what is now the Benelux region. On this basis, a variety of mixed dialects emerged, primarily based on Moselle and Rhine Franconian or High German.

The Russian tsars brought settlers into the Tsarist Empire in three main waves. Under Catherine II (1729–1796), 104 villages were founded along the Volga (around Saratov) between 1764 and 1767; from 1792 onwards, settlements were established in Volhynia and the Black Sea region (primarily due to religious migration – Mennonites). In a second wave under Tsar Alexander I (1777–1825), settlements were established in Bessarabia and Transcaucasia between 1803 and 1823; between 1830 and 1870, secondary colonies of settlers from Poland and Galicia were established in Volhynia, and after 1890, daughter settlements were founded in the Urals, Siberia and Turkestan. A final wave, beginning in the mid-19th century, saw settlers from the Black Sea region and Bessarabia move further into Dobruja —which was initially under Turkish administration and later came under Romanian and Bulgarian rule—as well as, as secondary migrants, to overseas destinations.

Consequently, in East Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, German dialects emerged, on the one hand, as settlement dialects with an unbroken connection to the areal network of the standard language, and, on the other hand, as ‘language island’ dialects, in some cases having lost their direct connection to the standard language. These linguistic islands, resulting from migration, partly reflected the dialectal origins of the settler groups (e.g. individual Austrian-Bavarian local dialects spoken by the Landler in Transylvania), whilst in other cases, where origins were heterogeneous, mixed dialects emerged through processes of levelling (characteristic, for example, in the Banat on a Rhine-Franconian basis), whereby a specific dialect formed the basis and primary (‘coarse dialectal’) features (Schibboleths) were eliminated. In all German-speaking enclaves in Eastern Europe, the underlying trend is the gradual erosion of Low German linguistic features. Where, on the other hand, the settlers were of a more homogeneous origin, the dialectal features they brought with them were well preserved. An example of this is the Transylvanian Saxon dialect, which is based on Moselle and Rhine Franconian (i.e. West Central German) dialects. In the areas settled at the earliest stage (Transylvania, Spiš, Gottschee), the degree to which dialects were preserved was also enhanced by the absence of a standard variety at the time of immigration. Cultural factors (the school system, the church/denominational affiliation, administrative languages) contributed to the integration into the German-speaking world and, in some cases, facilitated the erosion of dialectal features. In the settlement dialects belonging to the cohesive German-speaking world, the connection to neighbouring dialect areas remained clearly discernible (e.g. South Bohemian and South Moravian to Middle Bavarian; Silesian as a dialect group of East Central German).

Language contact with other ethnic groups gave rise to distinctive features not found in the dialects of origin; particularly at the lexical level, there were numerous borrowings from the surrounding languages, just as the contact languages incorporated German elements.^[8] Linguistic isolation hinders the adoption of language-wide and dialectal change processes; changes to the original dialects that occurred after emigration are not adopted. This underpins the assumption that linguistic islands have a preservative, conserving effect on the dialects found within them. The total number of remaining speakers is given as 150,000 in present-day Poland (mainly in Silesia), 30,000 in the Czech Republic (in the former Sudetenland), Slovakia and Slovenia combined 7,000, Hungary 35,000, Romania 45,000, Ukraine 35,000, and the European part of Russia 75,000.^[9]

Conversely, during the eastward expansion, the enlargement of the German-speaking area led to the emergence of Slavic linguistic enclaves within the contiguous German-speaking region. Alongside the best-known of these, Sorbian (Upper and Lower Sorbian in Lusatia), which has survived to this day and, together with the extinct Polabian language – which was widespread in Holstein, Mecklenburg and other areas (including the Wendland until the 18th century), is also known as Wendish; there were other West Slavic linguistic enclaves: in southern East Prussia, Masurian – generally regarded as a Polish dialect and considered extinct (spoken by Protestant Poles who had migrated from Masovia); Kashubian, which still exists but is classified as endangered, west of Gdańsk/Gdańsk, which was regarded as a dialect in Poland but has recently been granted the status of a minority language and, together with Polabian and the likewise extinct Pomeranian, forms the Elbe-Baltic Slavic group. There is disagreement as to whether theS ilesian dialect (‘Water Polish’, Śląski dialect), there is disagreement as to whether it is a Polish dialect or a language in its own right; similarly, from a linguistic structural perspective, Moravian—as a dialect of Czech—cannot be unambiguously accorded the status of an independent language.

Similarly, Baltic languages were present in the territory of East Prussia, such as Old Curonian—which cannot be definitively classified as East or West Baltic—Nehrung Curonian (a Latvian dialect with Lithuanian and Low German features), Little Lithuanian, which was important for the overall development of the Lithuanian language; and Old Prussian, which died out in the 17th century and was divided into two dialect groups (Samlandic and Pomesanian).

• Hadumod Bussmann: Encyclopaedia of Linguistics. 2nd ed. Stuttgart 1990.
• Werner Besch, Ulrich Knoop, Wolfgang Putschke, Herbert E. Wiegand (eds.): Dialectology. A Handbook of German and General Dialect Research. Berlin, New York (Vol. 1) 1982, (Vol. 2) 1983. (Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Studies [=HSK] 1.1, 1.2).
• Ludwig M. Eichinger, Albrecht Plewnia, Claudia Maria Riehl (eds.): Handbook of German Linguistic Minorities in Central and Eastern Europe. Tübingen 2008.
• Jan Goossens: German Dialectology. Berlin, New York 1977 (Göschen Collection 2205).
• Karl Heinz Göttert: Everything but Standard German. A Journey through Our Dialects. Berlin 2011.
• Werner König: dtv Atlas of the German Language. 14th ed. Munich 2004.
• Hermann Niebaum, Jürgen Macha: An Introduction to German Dialectology. Tübingen 1999.
• Helmut Protze: On the Study of German Language Islands in South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. Settlement, Language, History and Interactions. In: Gerhard Grimm, Krista Zach (eds.): The Germans in East-Central and South-Eastern Europe. Vol. 1. Munich 1995, pp. 55–84.
• Ernst Schwarz: German Dialects. Göttingen 1950.
• Peter Wiesinger: The German Language Enclaves. In: Hans Peter Althaus, Helmut Henne, H.E. Wiegand (eds.): Encyclopaedia of German Linguistics [= LGL]. 2nd ed. Tübingen 1980, pp. 491–500.

• woerterbuchnetz.de/ (Dictionary Network; including dictionaries of Alsatian, Lorraine, Luxembourgish, Rhenish and Palatinate)
• www.diwa.info/ (Digital Wenker Atlas)
• pub.ids-mannheim.de/extern/zdl/ (Journal of Dialectology and Linguistics, ZDL; table of contents)
• lwp.ids-mannheim.de/ (IDS German Loanword Portal)
• eeo.uni-klu.ac.at (Encyclopaedia of the Languages of Eastern Europe – with a particular focus on Slavic linguistic island dialects)

[1] See the word maps in König: dtv Atlas of the German Language, pp. 185–228.

[2] Within German linguistics, the terms ‘dialect’ and ‘Mundart’ are largely used synonymously, as they are in this account, although there have been various attempts to distinguish between them since the time of Jacob Grimm. See Goossens: *German Dialektology*, pp. 16ff.; Niebaum, Macha: *Dialektologie*, pp. 3f.; on ‘Platt’, see Niebaum, Macha: *Dialektologie*, p. 4.

[3] In historical linguistics (diachronic linguistics), branches and members of a language family are also referred to as dialects; for example: ‘Old Saxon is a West Germanic dialect’. This terminological usage must be distinguished from the usage discussed in this article within synchronic linguistics, which essentially corresponds to general linguistic usage.

[4] For an overview of regional dialect dictionaries, see König: dtv-Atlas Deutsche Sprache, p. 138.

[5] Various descriptive models exist for characterising this continuum of speech varieties or linguistic strata (‘strata’). See Niebaum, Macha: Dialectology, p. 7.

[6] Based on the dialect map of the German-speaking area around 1900 in König: dtv-Atlas Deutsche Sprache, p. 230ff.

[7] See the maps illustrating the eastward settlement in König: dtv Atlas of the German Language, p. 74.

[8] For example, there are numerous German loanwords in Romanian that were borrowed directly via Transylvanian Saxon; for instance, șură ‘barn’ was borrowed in its medieval or dialectal phonetic form (cf. Middle High German schiure), see also the German Loanword Portal and the Dictionary of Etymological Words from the Institute for the German Language: URL: lwp.ids-mannheim.de (accessed 16 September 2014).

[9] See Göttert: *Alles außer Hochdeutsch*, p. 203; at least for Romania, this figure is no longer up to date; the latest census from 2011 recorded 27,019 people with German as their mother tongue, see the 2011 census by the National Institute of Statistics: www.recensamantromania.ro/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/TS5.pdf (accessed 16 September 2014).

Thomas Schares: Dialect. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2015. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32834 (accessed 25 February 2015).