1. _The Middle German Group._--This group, which comprises the
dialects of the Middle Rhine, of Hesse, Thuringia, Upper Saxony
(Meissen), Silesia and East Prussia to the east of the lower Vistula
between Bischofswerder, Marienburg, Elbing, Wormditt and Wartenberg--a
district originally colonized from Silesia--may be most conveniently
divided into an East and a West Middle German group. A common
characteristic of all these dialects is the diminutive suffix _-chen_,
as compared with the Low German form _-ken_ and the Upper German
_-lein_ (O.H.G. _lin_). East Middle German consists of Silesian, Upper
Saxon and Thuringian,[9] together with the linguistic colony in East
Prussia. While these dialects have shifted initial Germanic _p_ to
_ph_, or even to _f_ (_fert_ = _Pferd_), the West Middle German
dialects (roughly speaking to the west of the watershed of Werra and
Fulda) have retained it. If, following a convincing article in the
_Zeitschrift fur deutsches Altertum_ (37, 288 ff.) by F. Wrede, we
class East and South Franconian--both together may be called High
Franconian--with the Upper German dialects, there only remain in the
West Middle German group:[10] (a) Middle Franconian and (b) Rhenish
Franconian. The former of these,[11] which with its _dat_, _wat_,
_allet_, &c. (cf. above) and its retention of the voiced spirant _b_
(written _v_) represents a kind of transition dialect to Low German,
is itself divided into ([alpha]) Ripuarian or Low Rhenish with Cologne
and Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) as centres, and ([beta]) Moselle
Franconian[12] with Trier (Treves) as principal town. The latter is
distinguished by the fact that in the Middle High German period it
shifts Germanic _-rp-_ and _-rd-_, which are retained in (a), to
_-rf-_ and _-rt-_ (cf. _werfen_, _hirtin_ with _werpen_,
_hirdin_).[13] The Rhenish Franconian dialect is spoken in the Rhenish
palatinate, in the northern part of Baden (Heidelberg), Hesse[14] and
Nassau, and in the German-speaking part of Lorraine. A line drawn from
Falkenberg at the French frontier to Siegen on the Lahn, touching the
Rhine near Boppard, roughly indicates the division between Middle and
Rhenish Franconian.
2. _The Upper German Group._--The Upper German dialects, which played
the most important part in the literature of the early periods, may be
divided into (a) a Bavarian-Austrian group and (b) a High
Franconian-Alemannic group. Of all the German dialects the
Bavarian-Austrian has carried the soundshifting to its furthest
extreme; here only do we find the labial voiced stop _b_ written _p_
in the middle of a word, viz. old Bavarian _kapames_, old Alemannic
_kabames_ ("we gave"); here too, in the 12th century, we find the
first traces of that broadening of _i_, _u_, _iu_ (_u_) to _ei_, _au_,
_eu_, a change which, even at the present day, is still foreign to the
greater part of the Alemannic dialects. Only in Bavarian do we still
find the old pronominal dual forms _es_ and _enk_ (for _ihr_ and
_euch_). Finally, Bavarian forms diminutives in _-el_ and _-erl_
(_Madel_, _Maderl_), while the Franconian-Alemannic forms are _-la_
and _-le_ (_Madle_). On the other hand, the pronunciation of _-s_ as
_-sch_, especially _-st_ as _-scht_ (cf. _Last_, _Haspel_, pronounced
_Lascht_, _Haschpel_), may be mentioned as characteristic of the
Alemannic, just as the _fortis_ pronunciation of initial _t_ is
characteristic of High Franconian, while the other Franconian and
Upper German dialects employ the _lenis_.
The Alemannic dialect which, roughly speaking, is separated from
Bavarian by the Lech and borders on Italian territory in the south and
on French in the west, is subdivided into: (a) Swabian, the dialect of
the kingdom of Wurttemberg and the north-western part of Tirol (cf. H.
Fischer, _Geographie der schwabischen Mundart_, 1895); (b) High
Alemannic (Swiss), including the German dialects of Switzerland, of
the southern part of the Black Forest (the Basel-Breisgau dialect),
and that of Vorarlberg; (c) Low Alemannic, comprising the dialects of
Alsace and part of Baden (to the north of the Feldberg and south of
Rastatt), also, at the present day, the town of Basel. Only Swabian
has taken part in the change of _i_ to _ei_, &c., mentioned above,
while initial Germanic _k_ has been shifted to _ch_ ([chi]) only in
High Alemannic (cf. _chalt_, _chind_, _chorn_, for _kalt_, _kind_,
_korn_). The pronunciation of _u_ as _u_, _u_ (_Hus_ for _Haus_) is
peculiar to Alsatian.
The High Franconian dialects, that is to say, east and south (or
south-Rhenish) Franconian, which are separated broadly speaking by the
river Neckar, comprise the language spoken in a part of Baden, the
dialects of the Main valley from Wurzburg upwards to Bamberg, the
dialect of Nuremberg and probably of the Vogtland (Plauen) and
Egerland. During the older historical period the principal difference
between East and South Franconian consisted in the fact that initial
Germanic _d_ was retained in the latter dialect, while East Franconian
shifted it to _t_. Both, like Bavarian and Alemannic, shift initial
German _p_ to the affricate _pf_.
Finally, the Bavarian-Austrian dialect is spoken throughout the
greater part of the kingdom of Bavaria (i.e. east of the Lech and a
fine drawn from the point where the Lech joins the Danube to the
sources of the rivers Elster and Mulde, this being the East Franconian
border-line), in Austria, western Bohemia, and in the German
linguistic "islands" embedded in Hungary, in Gottschee and the Sette
and Tredici Communi (cf. above).[15]