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Michael Schnabel: Dialektspaltung im thüringisch-bayerischen Grenzgebiet am Beispiel des OrtspaarsSparnberg/Rudolphstein. Wie eine politische Grenze zur Sprachgrenze wurde

This article, which is intended as a pilot study for the German Research Association (DFG) project „Studies on the Linguistic Situation in the Thuringian-Bavarian Border Region. New Dialect Boundaries on the Former Demarcation Line between West and East Germany after Four Decades of Political Separation?“, analyses dialect data collected by R. Petzold in the Thuringian village of Sparnberg and in the Upper Franconian village of Rudolphstein. Both villages are situated roughly 15 km north-west of Hof, directly on the old border between West and East Germany. There was close contact between the inhabitants of these two hamlets, which used the same dialect, prior to the establishment of the Iron Curtain.

The aim of the present investigation is to ascertain to what extent the original dialect of Sparnberg/Rudolphstein, which was a variant of East Franconian showing Thuringian influence, developed in different directions during the four decades in which Germany was politically divided. To this end, the linguistic usage of the older and younger generations in both villages is analysed on the basis of selected phonological, morphological and lexical features.

This analysis shows that the political boundary between Sparnberg and Rudolphstein became a linguistic boundary. This is particularly clear in the linguistic usage of the younger generations of the places under investigation. For example, the younger generation in Rudolphstein has replaced the [R] of the original dialect with [r], uses Samstag instead of the earlier Sonnabend and has given up the centralized pronunciation of the vowels, a feature characteristic of the original dialect. On the other side of the old demarcation line, the younger generation in Sparnberg has almost completely replaced the diphthongs [eI], [oU], [Åo] and [Ee] of the original dialect, as in Schm[eI]d ‘smith’, Br[oU]der ‘brother’, Gr[Åo]s ‘grass’ and J[Ee]ger ‘hunter’, respectively, by the monophthongs [i:], [u:], [Å:] and [e:]/[E:].