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Gottscheerish
Gottscheerisch,Kočevarščina
Native to	Slovenia
Region	Gottschee
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Elbe Germanic High German Upper German Bavarian Southern Bavarian Gottscheerish
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	gott1234
IETF	bar-SI
Gottscheerisch is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

Gottscheerish^[2][3] (Göttscheabarisch,^[4]German:Gottscheerisch,Slovene:kočevarščina) is anUpper Germandialect which was the main language of communication among theGottscheers in the enclave ofGottschee,Slovenia, before 1941. It is occasionally referred to asGranish orGranisch in the United States (< GermanKrainisch 'Carniolan'), a term also used forSlovene.^[5][6][7]

Gottscheerish belongs toSouthern Bavarian within theBavarian dialect group. The Bavarian dialects ofCarinthia are closest to it. Gottscheerish shares a lot of properties with the Bavarian dialects of the German language islands of theeastern Alps, among themCimbrian inVeneto,Sappada (Pladen), andTimau (Tischelwang) inFriuli-Venezia Giulia, andSorica (Zarz) inUpper Carniola (Slovenia).

Gottscheerish evolved independently for more than 600 years from the settlement of the first German-speaking settlers from Eastern Tyrol and Western Carinthia around 1330.

The Gottscheer Germans used Gottscheerish as oral language for daily communication, whereas their written language wasStandard German. However,folk songs andfolk tales collected in the 19th and 20th century have been published in Gottscheerish.

Already in the 19th century, many speakers of Gottscheerish left their homes to emigrate to theUnited States. After resettlement of most Gottscheers by the German occupation forces in 1941 during theSecond World War, only a few hundred speakers of Gottscheerish remained in their homeland. After the war, Gottscheerish was forbidden inYugoslavia.

According to theUNESCO, Gottscheerish is a "critically endangered language". The majority of its speakers live in the U.S., with a significant community inQueens,New York City.^[8] Most of them are of the oldest generation, who spent their childhood in Gottschee County. There are speakers inCanada, Austria and Germany as well; just as in the U.S., these populations have hardly any opportunity to practice it. Everyday language in the family and elsewhere is English and German or the local dialect, respectively.^[9]

In Slovenia, there are some families who preserved Gottscheerish in spite of the ban after World War II. Today, however, there are probably no more children learning it as first language. Most Gottscheerish speakers live inMoschnitze valley (Črmošnjiško-Poljanska dolina) betweenKočevske Poljane andČrmošnjice, where some Gottscheer families collaborated with thepartisan movement and therefore were allowed to stay.^[4][10]

As a primarily or exclusively spoken language, the written representation of Gottscheerish has varied considerably. The following table shows how some of the more problematic phonemes have been represented in different writing systems.

The symbolə forschwa is frequently distorted in representations of Gottscheerish, incorrectly replaced by the partial differential symbol∂ or umlautedä.

The phonological inventory of Gottscheerish differs from standard German in a number of ways, especially regarding palatal consonants. The phonological inventory here is based on Hans Tschinkel's 1908 grammar.^[12] Tschinkel does not explicitly distinguish between phonemic and phonetic status.

Consonants in parentheses are either phonetic/positional variants,idiolect variants, or dialect variants.^[15]

In the westernmost part of Gottschee, known as the Suchen Plateau (German:Suchener Hochtal), the phonemes /s/ and /ʃ/ merged to yield /ɕ/ and the phonemes /z/ and /ʒ/ merged to yield /ʑ/.^[16] The phoneme /r/ is rarely realized as [ʁ].^[17] The phoneme /l/ is realized as [ʟ] after front vowels and after labial/velar obstruents.^[18]

Tschinkel gives a large vowel inventory for Gottscheerish, especially forvowel clusters. He does not strictly distinguish between phonemic and phonetic values.^[19]

Falling diphthongs:ai, ao, au, aʉ, ea, ei, ia, iə, oa, oɛ, oi, ou, ɵi, ɵʉ, ua, ui, uə, ʉi, ʉə, əi, aːi, aːo

Rising diphthongs:i̯a,i̯aː,i̯ɛ,i̯e,i̯eː,i̯i,i̯iː,i̯o,i̯oː,i̯ɵ,i̯ɵː,i̯u,i̯uː,i̯ʉ,i̯ʉː,i̯ə

Fallingtriphthongs:oai, uai, eau, iəu, ʉəu, oːai, uːai

Rising-falling triphthongs:i̯ai,i̯au,i̯aʉ,i̯ea,i̯ei,i̯iə,i̯ou,i̯ɵʉ,i̯uə,i̯əi,u̯ai

Tetraphthongs:i̯oai,i̯uai,i̯oːai,i̯uːai

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding missing information.(September 2012)

The following pronouns are given in Hans Tschinkel's transcription.^[20]

The following numbers are given in abridged form in Hans Tschinkel's transcription.^[21]

A text in Karl Schröer's orthography (1870):

A text partially based on Hans Tschinkel's orthography (ca. 1908):

• Karl Julius Schröer:Wörterbuch der Mundart von Gottschee. K. k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Wien 1870.
• Adolf Hauffen:Die deutsche Sprachinsel Gottschee. Geschichte und Mundart, Lebensverhältnisse, Sitten und Gebräuche, Sagen, Märchen und Lieder. K. k. Universitäts-Buchdruckerei und Verlags-Buchhandlung ‚Styria‘, Graz 1895. S. 19-33: Die Gottscheer Mundart.
• Hans Tschinkel:Grammatik der Gottscheer Mundart. Niemeyer, Halle a. S. 1908.
• Walter Tschinkel:Wörterbuch der Gottscheer Mundart. 2 Bände. Mit Illustrationen von Anni Tschinkel. Studien zur Österreichisch-Bairischen Dialektkunde. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien 1973.
• Maridi Tscherne:Du höscht lai oin Hoimöt. Domovina je ena sama. Pesmarica pesmi v kočevarskem narečju. Slovensko kočevarsko društvo Peter Kosler, Ljubljana 2010.
• Maridi Tscherne:Beartərpiəchla - Göttscheabarisch-Kroinarisch. Kočevarsko-slovenski slovarček. Zavod za ohranitev kulturne dediščine Nesseltal Koprivnik, Koprivnik/Nesseltal 2010.

• Gottscheer Relief Association, New York: Language Lessons. Gottscheerisch for English Speakers
• Gottschee.de: Folk songs in Gottscheerish
• Peter Kosler Association, Slovenia
• Kultura po 700 letih na robu propada (Domen Caharijas,Dnevnik, 17 October 2009, in Slovene),parts of the body in Gottscheerish^{[dead link]}

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