 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
For assistance with IPA transcriptions of Colognian for Wikipedia articles, seeHelp:IPA/Colognian. |
This article covers thephonology of modernColognian as spoken in the city ofCologne.Varieties spoken outside of Cologne are only briefly covered where appropriate.Historic precedent versions are not considered.
There are slight pronunciation variations in Colognian which can be considered regional within the city,[1] and some others seemingly more reflecting social status. The phonological impact of either is marginal.[2]
Spelling of Colognian can follow several standards. Pronunciation variations are allowed to show as variant spellings in all of them. Because the spellings of single words may differ widely between systems, listing spellings in examples of phonological nature is not helpful. Thus, onlyIPAtranscriptions are used here in examples.
Colognian is part of theContinental West Germanicdialect continuum. It is a centralRipuarian language. Ripuarian languages are related toMoselle Franconian andLimburgish. Local languages of all three groups are usually not understood at once by Colognian speakers, but comparatively easily learned.
Other languages almost always spoken by Colognian speakers today are theRhinelandic andStandard varieties ofGerman.Mixed language use is common today, so that in an average speakers awareness, Colognian lexemes are contrasting the two kinds of German ones as well.
Colognian has about 60 basephonemes and some 22 double consonants and diphthongs, depending on analysis.
With about 25 phonemes, the Colognian consonant system exhibits an average number of consonants in comparison with other languages.Notable differences with the envelopingGerman language are the absence of thefricative[ç] and theHigh Germanaffricate/p͡f/.All Colognian consonants arepulmonic with the obvious exception of theglottal stop/ʔ/ which briefly interrupts the pulmonic air flow.
| Labial | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar/ Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||||
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | k | ʔ | |||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | |||||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | t͡ʃ | |||||
| voiced | d͡ʒ | |||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | ɧ | x | h | |
| voiced | v | z | ʒ | ʝ~j | ʁ | |||
| Approximant | l | |||||||
Thephoneme/ʃ/ hasallophonic variations. Positional ones include[j],[ʝ],[ʒ].Coarticulative variations cover a range from the standard English "light"[ʃ] to stronglyvelarized and/orpharyngealized versions. The average Colognian[ʃ] is "darker" and often spoken with the lips more protruded than English versions. Since the audible difference may be small despite different articulations, foreigners often confuse it with thephone[ɧ].
Colognian, similar toGerman,Dutch, and otherWest Central German varieties, exhibits a phenomenon calledterminal devoicing orAuslautverhärtung: in the word-final position,voiced consonant phonemes lose their voicing to becomeunvoiced. In the absence ofliaisons andcoarticulations, only the unvoiced, or fortis, variant is pronounced. For example, the words[zik] ('side') and[ˈziɡə] ('sides') have a stem-final/ɡ/. Consequentially, according to theKölsch Akadamie orthographic rules, they are written as⟨Sigg⟩ and⟨Sigge⟩, respectively,[8] while the more phonetic common, andWrede, spellings write⟨Sick⟩ and⟨Sigge⟩, respectively.[9]
For the phoneme/s/ only, Colognian hasinitial voicing, quite likeGerman has it. That means,/s/ never appears in word-initial position, only/z/ does. Where an unvoiced or fortis initial would be required, for instance in a word loaned from another language,/t͡s/ is used:[t͡sʊp] ('soup'), fromOld Frenchsoupe, itself fromOld High Germansupphan;[10] or[ˈt͡sɔtiɐ²] ('sorting'), from the same word inOld Colognian, which borrowed it before 1581 fromOld Italiansortire.[11]Foreign words that areneologisms are usually adopted to Colognianphonotactic rules when pronounced; for instance the English computerese termserver appears as[ˈzɜːvɐ] or[ˈzœ²vɐ] in most instances, or even[ˈzɛʁfɐ] among elderly speakers, at least.
| Front | Central | Back | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | ||||||
| short | long | short | long | short | long | ||
| Close | i | iː | y | yː | u | uː | |
| Near-close | ɪ | ʏ | ʊ | ||||
| Close-mid | e | eː | ø | øː | ə | o | oː |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɛː | œ | œː | ɐ | ɔ | ɔː |
| Open | aaː | ||||||
Diphthongs are/aɪ,aːʊ,aʊ,eɪ,iɐ̯,oʊ,ɔʏ,øʏ/./aːʊ/ only occurs with Stoßton.
Colognian and otherRipuarian dialects have twopitch accents, commonly called 'Accent 1' and 'Accent 2'. The distinction occurs on stressedheavy syllables. Accent 1 is themarked tone, while Accent 2 is the default. Accent 1 has a falling pitch in the city of Cologne, though the realizations of the two tones differ elsewhere.
The terminology for the two tones can be somewhat confusing. Following are the German and (in italics) Dutch terminology.[12]
| Accent 1 | Accent 2 |
|---|---|
| Tonakzent 1 (T1) | Tonakzent 2 (T2) |
| Schärfung (+Schärfung) | (−Schärfung) |
| geschärft (+geschärft) | ungeschärft (−geschärft) |
| Stoßton | Schleifton |
| stoottoon | sleeptoon |
| hoge toon | valtoon |
| accent 1 | accent 2 |
(Note that the Dutchhoge toon "high tone" andvaltoon "falling tone" are descriptive only, and not consistent between varieties of Ripuarian. They would be misnomers for Colognian.)
Accent 1 (T1) can only occur on stressed, heavy syllables: that is, syllables with long vowels, diphthongs, or a short vowel followed by asonorant (/m,n,ŋ,r,l/). Minimal pairs include T2/ʃtiːf/ "stiff, rigid" vs. T1/ʃtîːf/ "stiffness, rigidity; starch",/huːs/ "house (nom./acc.)" vs./hûːs/ "house (dat.)",/ʃlɛːʃ/ "bad" vs./ʃlɛ̂ːʃ/ "beats, blows, strikes (n. pl.)" with long vowels,/zei/ "she" vs./zêi/ "sieve" with a diphthong, and/kan/ "(I/he) can" vs./kân/ "(tea)pot, jug" with a short vowel plus sonorant.[13]
