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Isoglosses in the canton of Zürich. The red line marks the transition of /äng/ "narrow" vs. /eng/ in the dialect of the Thurgau. The green line separates the /o:big/ "evening" of the Oberland from /a:big/ elsewhere.

Zürich German, or Züritüütsch is the dialect of High Alemannic German spoken in the Canton of Zürich, Switzerland.

It is divided in six sub-dialects, covering the entire Canton with the exception of the parts north of the Thur and the Rhine.

• The dialect of the town of Zürich (Stadt-Mundart)
• The dialect spoken around Lake Zürich (See-Mundart)
• The dialect of the Knonauer Amt west of the Albis (Ämtler Mundart)
• The dialect of the area of Winterthur
• The dialect of the Zürcher Oberland around Lake Pfäffikon and the upper Tösstal valley
• The dialect of the Zürcher Unterland around Bülach and Dielsdorf

Like all Swiss German dialects, it is essentially a spoken language, whereas the written language is standard German. Likewise, there is no official orthography of the Zürich dialect. When it is written, it rarely follows the guidelines published by Eugen Dieth in his book Schwyzertütschi Dialäktschrift, in fact, only language experts know about these guidelines. Furthermore, Dieth's spelling uses a lot of diacritical marks not found on a normal keyboard. Young people often use dialect for personal messages, such as when texting with their mobile phones. As they do not have a standard way of writing they tend to blend high German spelling with Swiss German phrasing.

The Zürich dialect is generally perceived as fast spoken, less melodic than, for example, the Bernese. In the northern parts of the canton, the "r" is pronounced as a uvular trill, whereas in the city around the lake and in the southern parts, it is pronounced as an alveolar trill.

Characteristic of the city dialect is that it most easily adopts external influences; in particular, the second generation Italians (secondi) have had a crucial influence, as has the English language through the media. The wave of Turkish and ex-Yugoslavian immigration of the 1990s is leaving its imprint on the dialect of the city in particular.

Literature

• Dieth, Eugen: Schwyzertütschi Dialäktschrift. Aarau: Sauerländer. ISBN 379412832X (proposed orthography, in German)
• Salzmann, Martin: Resumptive Prolepsis: A study in indirect A'-dependencies. Utrecht: LOT, 2006 (=LOT Dissertation Series 136). Chapter 4: Resumptives in Zurich German relative clauses, online [1].
• Weber, Albert: Zürichdeutsche Grammatik. Ein Wegweiser zur guten Mundart. Unter Mitwirkung von Eugen Dieth. Zürich (=und Wörterbücher des Schweizerdeutschen in allgemeinverständlicher Darstellung. Bd. I). (prescriptive grammar book, in German)
• Weber, Albert and Bächtold, Jacques M.: Zürichdeutsches Wörterbuch. Zürich (=Grammatiken und Wörterbücher des Schweizerdeutschen in allgemeinverständlicher Darstellung. Bd. III). (dictionary Zürich German - Standard German)
• Renate Egli-Wildi: Züritüütsch verstaa, Züritüütsch rede A study book for the Zürich variant of Swiss German, intended for fluent German speakers, published by the Society for Swiss German, Zürich Section. 108 pages, 2 CDs. Küsnacht 2007. ISBN 3-033-01382-7 (in German)

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• This page was last modified on 14 July 2008, at 15:01.

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