Zuid-Gelders
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
Zuid-Gelders (E: South Guelderish), or (G:) Kleverlãndisch (E.: Kleverlandish, from Land of Cleves), is a dialect of the Dutch language that is spoken on the edge of the Veluwe country, around Nijmegen, in the Bommelerwaard, and other neighbouring areas in the Netherlands. Among the local variants of Zuid-Gelders spoken in the Netherlands are Zevenaars, Waals and Nijmegens. Moreover, it is also spoken traditionally in parts of Western Germany at the Lower Rhine, including Duisburg and partly Wuppertal up to Wenden, which is the only Westphalian municipality where it is spoken.
Each of the dialects from the Zuid-Gelders group has many features shared with the Brabantic dialects. The Zuid-Gelders dialects form no unity against the Brabantic dialects, i.e. they are not more closely related to each other than to any Brabantic dialect. There also exists no isogloss bundle between the "Brabantic" and "Zuid-Gelders" dialects: thus, the distinction is purely conventional. To the south of Venlo and -at least formerly- in the area of today's Duisburg it borders to the Limburgish language.
Zuid-Gelders is part of the Low Franconian languages, which are West Germanic languages. Zuid-Gelders is considered a dialect of Low Rhenish in Germany. Low Rhenish is to include Limburgish as the only other form according to this definition. Together they belong to the greater Meuse-Rhine area, a large group of southeast Low Franconian dialects. This group is called Meuse-Rhenish (Dutch: Maas-Rijnlands, German: Rheinmaasländisch) by the Amsterdam Linguist Ad Welschen.
A dialect of Zuid-Gelders origin spoken in the United States is Pella Dutch.