Kerkrade dialect (natively or simply , literally 'Kerkradish', , Standard Dutch: , Standard German: meaning (the) dialect of Kerkrade) is a Ripuarian dialect spoken in Kerkrade and its surroundings, including Herzogenrath in Germany. It is spoken in all social classes, but the variety spoken by younger people in Kerkrade is somewhat closer to Standard Dutch.
The name is strictly a scientific term on both sides of the border. Especially on the Dutch side of the border, the speakers of the Kerkrade dialect consider it to be a Limburgish dialect (see Southeast Limburgish dialect) and call it ('Limburgish'), ('Kerkradish') or simply ('dialect').
There are three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. The corresponding definite articles are , and . The plural form takes the feminine article regardless of the gender.
The plural form of nouns is formed with by adding , or to the stem or by umlauting. Examples: - , - , - , - .
The plural form can also be differentiated from the singular by tone, as in - . This can be combined with other differences, such as umlaut: - .
As in German, the plural form can be unmarked: - .
The ending is used mainly for neuter nouns.
The Kerkrade dialect has many loanwords from Standard High German, a language formerly used in school and church. However, not all German loanwords are used by every speaker.
An example sentence:
This example sentence illustrates both the High German consonant shift (, ) and the â shift ().
As most other Ripuarian and Limburgish dialects, the Kerkrade dialect features a distinction between the thrusting tone (, or ), which has a shortening effect on the syllable (not shown in transcriptions in this article) and the slurring tone (, ). In this article, the slurring tone is transcribed as a high tone, whereas the thrusting tone is left unmarked. This is nothing more than a convention, as the phonetics of the Kerkrade pitch accent are severely under-researched. There are minimal pairs, for example 'wall' - 'carrot'.
The spelling presented here, which is to a large extent Dutch-based is used in Kirchröadsjer dieksiejoneer, the only dictionary of the Kerkrade dialect. There is no official German-based orthography.
Furthermore, there is , which never appears as a separate letter, but only in the centering diphthongs , and (phonetically , and ). However, only half of the centering diphthongs are spelled this way; the remaining , and are spelled , and . In other dialects and regional languages of the Netherlands, is sometimes used for the long open , which is always spelled in this orthography.
As the orthography is Dutch-based, it does not make use of the , which is extensively used on the other side of the border. It represents the phoneme . In turn, German-based orthographies use for the sound, whereas is restricted for the voiceless alveolar affricate , though it can also be spelled . Furthermore, the letter found in those orthographies is also not used. It stands for either or in German-based orthographies.
In this orthography, is spelled , is spelled (although is used in the stem-final position), is spelled , is spelled , whereas is spelled (rather than , which is a common spelling in Dutch-based orthographies of Limburgish).
The orthography is highly phonemic, with the exception of the spelling of which, for the most part, are spelled phonetically. As in Limburgish, Swedish and Norwegian, stress and tone are not marked, blurring the distinction between and in open syllables and between and in closed syllables, where the distinction between the short on the one hand and the long on the other is also blurred. The grapheme-phoneme correspondence is as follows:
The most similar other Ripuarian dialects are those of Bocholtz, Vaals and Aachen.
A distinct East Limburgish dialect called Egelzer plat is spoken in Eygelshoven, in the north of the Kerkrade municipality. The biggest differences between the two is the presence of the High German consonant shift in the Kerkrade dialect as well the pronunciation of the sound written in Limburgish; in Eygelshoven, it is pronounced as in Limburgish and (southern) standard Dutch (as a voiced velar fricative), whereas in the Kerkrade dialect it is pronounced as in Colognian, as a palatal approximant (where it is spelled ), except after back vowels where it is rhotacized to a voiced uvular fricative, resulting in a phonetic merger with .