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| Eastphalian | |
|---|---|
| ostfälsch Platt[1] | |
| Native to | Germany |
| Region | Lower Saxony,Saxony-Anhalt |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | east2290 |
 Eastphalian in yellow within theLow German language area after 1945 | |
Eastphalian, orEastfalian (German:Ostfälisch, Eastphalian and Low Saxon:ostfälsch Platt), is aLow German language spoken in southeastern parts ofLower Saxony and western parts ofSaxony-Anhalt inGermany.
The language area between theWeser andElbe rivers stretches from theLüneburg Heath in the north to theHarz mountain range andWeser Uplands in the south. It comprises theHanover Region,Brunswick andCalenberg Land as well as theMagdeburg Börde, including the cities ofHanover,Braunschweig,Hildesheim,Göttingen andMagdeburg. It roughly corresponds with the historic region ofEastphalia.
Eastphalian as a separate dialect was determined by 19th centurylinguistics, tracing it back toOld Saxon variants spoken in eastern parts of the medievalstem duchy ofSaxony. Towards the Elbe region in the southeast, the language area is increasingly influenced by theHigh German consonant shift.
The most prominent characteristic in Eastphalian is the object pronounsmek anddek in contrast tomi anddi in Northern Lower Saxon, respectively for High Germanmir andmich resp.dir anddich), as well asöhne,ösch/össek andjöck (Northern Low Germanem, u[n]s, jo [ju], High Germanihm/ihn, uns, euch). Although Eastphalian agrees with many Low German dialects (with exceptions, e.g., in southern Westphalian) in that the dative has coincided with the accusative in the forms mentioned, its peculiarity is shown by the fact that the accusative has prevailed over the dative in all of these forms (in Northern Low Saxon it is the other way around). In Eastphalian, an accusative of the first person plural has been preserved with the formüsch and southern Eastphalianössek (cf. Old High Germanunsih, Old Englishūsic [besidesūs], alsoHigh Alemannicüs,südbairischins in Upper German).
Much like in most Dutch Low Saxon variants, the e-apocope, i.e. the omission of the-e at the end of the word, as took place in North Lower Saxon, was entirely absent in Eastphalian. Thus, the ablaut-e in words likeSprake (language, speech) andWiele (while) remains and is not dropped. Furthermore, the-e is also preserved in nouns in the nominative case, where High German no longer has them either, such as in Harte (heart), Frue (woman), Herre (man), Bäre (bear). The same is true for many adjectives, such as dicke (fat, thick) and wisse (clear, fast; cf. Germangewiss) and substantivizing endings such as -unge and -nisse, as well as for the older form -ig(e)['ɪjə]/['ɪç], which developed from Middle Low German-inge. The-e ending has also survived for nouns in the dative case. Thus, for example,uppen Felle (on the field).[2]
Another feature of Eastphalian is the residual preservation of the prefixge- ase- in the participle II (past participle) of verbs; since this prefix has also been lost in the very Northern regions of Eastphalia, e. g., for example, in Celle itswään ("been") is opposed to southernewää(se)n[əˈvɛː(z)n̩], orewest[əˈvɛst]. However, this prefix is dropped if the previous word already ends in a schwa like-e or-er.[3] Again, this is very similar to most Dutch Low Saxon varieties classified as Westfalian.
Another striking difference between Eastphalian and all other Low German dialects is the absence (or undoing) of vowel lengthening in open syllable before-el, -en, -er in the following syllable, e. g. EastphalianLöppel[ˈlœpl̩],betten[ˈbɛtn̩],Pepper[ˈpɛpɐ] ("spoon, bit, pepper") versus Northern Low SaxonLäpel[ˈlɛːpl̩],bäten[ˈbɛːtn̩],Päper[ˈpɛːpɐ].[4]
Eastphalian also takes its own position in equalizing Old Saxon phonetic positions, especially in reducing vowels distinguished in open syllables, by simplifying more than Westphalian (which has no reduction in its southern dialects), but not going as far as the core area of Northern Lower Saxon (where only three of the original eight vowel phonemes remain). Despite the diversity of the sounds in detail, most of the Eastphalian dialects thus have a common sound system. (In this case, besides the Heide-Eastphalian the Göttingisch-Grubenhagen-Eastphalian - which in this case is in the same position as the East-Westphalian - is left out).
Another thing to mention is that prepositions in most of Eastphalian do not contain an umlaut. These includefor[ˈfɔr],unner[ˈʊnər] andover(Hildesheim)[ˈɛo̯vər], as opposed to Northern Lower Saxonför,ünner andöver.
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