TheBremian dialect (Low German:Bremer Platt) is the dialect ofLow German spoken in the city ofBremen. It comes from the Oldenburgisch dialect.

Bremian is classified as aNorthern Low Saxon dialect since it derives from the Oldenburgisch dialects.^[1] This means that it comes fromWest Low German.^[2] Bremian also shares the most mutual intelligibility with the Northern Oldenburgisch dialect.^[3]

It also means that Bremian's "sister dialects" are the aforementioned Northern Oldenburgisch dialect, which is spoken in the formerCounty of Oldenburg, and is a more pure dialect^[4] and Jeverland Oldenburgisch, spoken in theJeverland area ofEast Frisia, which has influences fromEast Frisian Low Saxon.^[5]

For Bremen, Heymann postulates the following phoneme inventory:

• Short vowels:a /a/,i /ɪ/, u /ʊ/,e /ə/, e /ɛ/, o /ɔ/^[6] and their umlauts ö /œ/ and ü /ʏ/, the former being rare and the latter tending towardsi /ɪ/^[6]
• Long vowels:aa (ah,a) /ɔ:/,ie (i) /i:/,uu (uh, u) /u:/,oo (oh, o) /o:/, ee (eh, e) /e:/, e (ä) /ɛ:/^[7] and their umlautsö /œ:/ (umlaut to aa/ɔ:/, jyoungerä /æ:/~/ɛ:/),öö (öh,ö) (umlaut to aa /o:/, youngeree /e:/),üü (üh, ü, umlaut to younger /u:/) /y:/. Here too, Bremen tends to eliminate the umlaut.^[8]
• Diphthongs:ei /aɪ̯/ (partly from oldereu (oi) /ɔɪ̯/),au /aʊ̯/^[9]
• Liquid:l /l/,m /m/,n /n/,r /r/^[10]
• Semivowelsj /j/, w (v)^[11]
• Fricatives:f /f/, s /s/, s /z/, h /h/, ch /x/, sch /ʃ/^[10]
• Plosives:g /g/, k /k/, d /d/, t /t/, b /b/, p /p/^[10]
• Affricates:z (tz) /ts/ only in loanwords,^[12] j /dʒ/ as allophone of j /j /,^[13]

Notes:

• The tendency of Bremen to eliminate umlauts is region-specific and does not apply to North Low Saxon as a whole, which would follow Sass (1956).^[14]

For the Bremen dialect according to Heymann:^[15]

The present participle is often used as an adjective and is regularly formed with -nd ( staanden Fotes "how things went and stood"), but the -d is often omitted.^[16]

According to Heymann,^[17] the following applies to Bremen:

According to Heymann,^[18] the following applies to Bremen:

According to Heymann,^[19]ehr refers more to a person,se more to a thing of the female sex andjem more to persons.

According to Heymann,^[20] the following applies to Bremen:

The genitive has largely disappeared from use in Bremen, replaced by paraphrases with von "from" or the possessive genitive, e.g.,arme Lüde ehr Pankoken. It is preserved especially in adverbial expressions, e.g.,siner Wege gahn "to go one's way" and in family names (Badendamms' Dochter "a daughter from the Bavendamm family").^[21]

For Bremen according to Heymann:^[22] Accusative and dative have partially merged. For pronouns, the merger is complete. For masculine nouns, the dative ending is optional, so that accusative forms are always permissible as datives. For neuter and feminine nouns, the difference in the article forms remains, although mostly only in enclitic forms (uut 'n Huse, up 'r Karken , but in the full form the accusative form applies:uut dat Huus,uut de Karken). Afterto, dative forms are sometimes found (to'm besten geben).

In contrast, dative forms are more common in written language, because "many people are now abusing the dative, which is based on a misunderstanding of the current state of development of the Low German dialect and, in the conscious or unconscious effort to give their language a more refined character, excessively frequently carries the dative from High German into the Low German representation. ... [I]n particular, in written representation, the accusative should be chosen instead."^[23]

According to Heymann,^[24] "the current Low German sentence structure (...) is so strongly influenced by High German that it differs little from it; however, the harsher paratactic sentence structure that is particularly characteristic of the latter (=the Middle German!) should not be disdained either."

• Hamburg German
• East Frisian Low Saxon
• Dutch Low Saxon

• Heymann, Wilhelm (1909)."Das bremische Plattdeutsch: eine grammatische Darstellung auf sprachgeschichtlicher Grundlage" (in German). Retrieved2025-04-08.

• A list of media in the Bremen dialect

• Low German
• German dialects
• Northern Low Saxon dialects
• Bremen (city)

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