High Alemannic German

Geographical spread of High Alemannic dialects. Marked in red is the Brünig-Napf-Reuss line.

High Alemannic is a branch of Alemannic German and is often considered to be part of the German language, even though it is only partly intelligible to non-Alemannic speakers.

The High Alemannic dialects are spoken in Liechtenstein and in most of German-speaking Switzerland (for instance Bernese German or Zürich German) except for the Highest Alemannic dialects in the South and for the Low Alemannic Basel German dialect in the North West. They are also spoken in Southern Baden-Württemberg in Germany and in Vorarlberg in Austria. Therefore, High Alemannic must not be confused with the term "Swiss German", which refers to all Alemannic dialects of Switzerland as opposed to Swiss variant of Standard German, the literary language of diglossic German-speaking Switzerland.

Features

The distinctive feature of the High Alemannic dialects is the completion of the High German consonant shift, for instance chalt [xalt] 'cold' vs. Low Alemannic and standard German 'kalt' [kʰalt].