Native speakers of the dialect tend to call it eitherHaëmets orAchels, depending on where they are from (the former city of Hamont or the former village of Achel).
/m,p,b/ arebilabial, whereas/f,v/ arelabiodental./w/ is a bilabial approximant[β̞].[1] In this article, it is transcribed with ⟨w⟩, following the recommendations of Carlos Gussenhoven regarding transcribing the corresponding Standard Dutch phone.[4]
The word-initial/sx/ cluster can be realized as[ɕx].[5]
/ʃ,ʒ/ do not occur as frequently as in many other dialects, and can be said to be marginal phonemes.[5]
/ʀ/ is auvular trill. Word-finally it is devoiced to either a fricative[χ] or a fricative trill[ʀ̝̊].[6]
Other allophones include[ɱ,ɲ,tʃ,ɡ]. They appear in contexts similar to Belgian Standard Dutch.[5]
Voiceless consonants are regressivelyassimilated. An example of this is the past tense of regular verbs, where voiceless stops and fricatives are voiced before the past tense morpheme[də].[5]
Word-final voiceless consonants are voiced in intervocalic position.[5]
Short monophthongs of the Hamont-Achel dialect on a vowel chart, fromVerhoeven (2007:223)Long monophthongs of the Hamont-Achel dialect on a vowel chart, fromVerhoeven (2007:223)
On average, long vowels are 95 ms longer than short vowels. This is very similar to Belgian Standard Dutch, in which the difference is 105 ms.[5][9]
The quality of the monophthongs is as follows:
/i,iː,u,uː,eː,oː,ɛ,ɛː,ɔ,ɔː,ɑː/ are similar to the corresponding cardinal vowels[i,u,e,o,ɛ,ɔ,ɑ], but none of them are quite as peripheral.[7]
Among the front rounded vowels,/y/,/ø/ and/øː/ are phonetically central like/ə/ and/aː/: ([ʉ̞,ɵ,ɵː]), whereas/yː,œ/ and/œː/ are front[yː,œ,œː], similar to the corresponding cardinal vowels./y/ isnear-close and slightly advanced from the central position. The phonetic distance between it and the close-mid/ø/ is not very great; the same has been reported in the Ripuariandialect of Kerkrade spoken on theGermany–Netherlands border. At the same time,/ø/ is phonetically similar to the unstressable/ə/ and the two differ mainly in rounding.[10][11]
/e/ is somewhat lower and more central[e̠] than/eː/.[12]
The short/æ/ and/ɑ/ are somewhat higher and more front ([æ̝,ɑ̝̈]) than their long counterparts.[7]
Unlike in the neighboring dialect of Weert, all monophthong-glide combinations which are not phonemic diphthongs are restricted to thesyllable coda. Those are mostly/j/ preceded by a vowel, and they are/uj,uːj,eːj,oːj,ɔj,ɔːj,æːj/ and the marginal/ɑj/. There also are two combinations of a vowel followed by/w/, which are/iw/ and/œw/.[13]
Dialect of Hamont-Achel contrasts long and short closing diphthongs. The long ones are on average 70 ms longer than their short equivalents. Centering diphthongs are all long.[7]
Like most other Limburgish dialects, but unlike some other dialects in this area,[15][16] the prosody of the Hamont-Achel dialect has a lexical tone distinction, which is traditionally referred to asstoottoon ('push tone') orAccent 1, which generally has a shortening effect on the syllable andsleeptoon ('dragging tone') orAccent 2. As in other articles, the latter is transcribed as a high tone, whereas the former is not marked. The difference between Accent 1 and Accent 2 can signal either lexical differences or grammatical distinctions, such as those between the singular and the plural forms of some nouns. It is phonemic only in stressed syllables, an example of a minimal pair ishoes/ˈɦus/ '(record) sleeve' vs.hoes/ˈɦus˦/ 'house'.[17]
Bernaerts, J. (1991),Hamonts-Achels dialectwoordenboek. Etymologische verkenningen in het dialect van Hamont en Achel, Hamont-Achel{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Schouten, Bert; Peeters, Wim (1996), "The Middle High German vowel shift, measured acoustically in Dutch and Belgian Limburg: diphthongization of short vowels.",Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik,63 (1):30–48,JSTOR40504077
Verhoeven, Jo (2007), "The Belgian Limburg dialect of Hamont",Journal of the International Phonetic Association,37 (2):219–225,doi:10.1017/S0025100307002940
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