Language in the Palatinate

Warning: I'm not a linguist. I don't even speak German. I looked this information up because I was curious and decided to share it because other people might be curious too. I'm not and don't claim to be an authoritative source.

Like English, German is not one monolithic language but is composed of regional dialects of greater or lesser mutual comprehensibility. The most basic division is between High and Low German. The adjectives "high" and "low" don't refer to education or social standing but rather to topography. High German is historically the language of mountainous southern Germany. Low German is the language of the lower, flatter north. Generally speaking, Low German hasn't gone through the consonant shifts than High German did. It therefore has closer similarities to English and Dutch than High German does.

Each of these two divisions breaks down into many further divisions. In particular, Central German is a subdivision of High German. It can be described as the German spoken south of the Benrath line and north of the Speyer line. A Central German speaker is someone who says machen (to make) instead of maken, as a Low German speaker would do, but Appel (apple) instead of Apfel, as a High German speaker farther south would do. One of my cats is named Pfennig. My ancestors would have called him Pennig. (The English cognate is penny.)

Central German is further divided into East and West Central German. Rhine Franconian is a subdivision of West Central German. It's spoken north of the Speyer (Appel/Apfel) line but southeast of the Sankt Goar line that distinguishes people who say wat (what) and dat (that) from High German speakers who say was and das. A speaker of Rhine Franconian would say was and das but they would also say Appel.

Palatine German (or Palatine Franconian) is a subdivision of Rhine Franconian. It's related to Hessian and to the German dialects spoken in Lorraine, in what's now France. Pennsylvania German is a descendant of Palatine German, brought to the New World by immigrants in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

One can go further with this. Palatine German can be divided into the group of dialects spoken in the western part of the Palatinate, Westpfälzisch, and the group of dialects spoken in the eastern part, Vorderpfälzisch. As far as I can tell, Freinsheim lies within the region dominated by the Vorderpfälzische Dialektgruppe.

See also Claire Gebben's article on Dialects and archaic words posted 04 Feb 2013.