Talk:High German languages
In Low German, you mention it's called "Plautdeutch". What's the equivalent term for High German?
- Hochdeutsch, i believe
2002.04.09:
In some High German dialects - the High Alemannic dialects spoken in parts of Germany and Switzerland, there is even initial [x] and [kx], which makes the second sound shifting complete.
I'm not sure this is accurate. Note that English /p/ and /t/ correspond to High German initial & medial affricates and to final fricatives, but /k/ follows an unexpected pattern of /k/ initially and /x/ medially, rather than the expected /kx/:
final ~ fricative |
initial ~ stop medial & final ~ fricative |
|
| pound ~ Pfund apple ~ Apfel Help ~ Hilfe |
two ~ zwei *mitten ~ Mütze (?is this valid) hot ~ Heiss |
cow ~ Kuh !/k/ ~ /k/ make ~ machen !/k/ ~ /x/ book ~ Buch !/k/ ~ /x/ |
Linguistically, I suspect that rather than the sound shift being from [x] to [kx], it was from [kx] to [x]. That is, the sequence was stop-affricate-fricative: [k]~[kx]~[x], which would follow the linguistic rule of thumb of sound tending to undergo lenition rather than fortition. This would mean that High German [x] is a later development than Swiss German [kx], which would require revision of the above text. But then why does initial /k/ stay put? Or am I using faulty examples? Anybody know for sure? pgdudda