Alemán Coloniero
Encyclopedia
Alemán Coloniero, spoken in Colonia Tovar
, Venezuela
, is a dialect that belongs to the Low Alemannic
branch of German
.
, is not mutually intelligible with Standard German
. It is spoken by descendants of Germans from the Black Forest
region of southern Baden
, who emigrated to Venezuela in 1843. Most speakers also speak Spanish
, and the language has also acquired some Spanish loanword
s.
Colonia Tovar
Colonia Tovar is a city located in the Tovar Municipality of the state of Aragua in Venezuela, 60 km west of Caracas. The town was named after Martín Tovar y Ponte who donated the land over 150 years ago, and was founded by Agostino Codazzi...
, Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, is a dialect that belongs to the Low Alemannic
Low Alemannic German
Low 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 speakers of German.Variants:*Vorarlbergisch*Upper Rhenish*Alsatian, spoken in the Alsace, France...
branch of German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
.
Characteristics
The language, like other Alemannic dialectsAlemannic German
Alemannic is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family. It is spoken by approximately ten million people in six countries: Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, France and Italy...
, is not mutually intelligible with Standard German
Standard German
Standard German is the standard variety of the German language used as a written language, in formal contexts, and for communication between different dialect areas...
. It is spoken by descendants of Germans from the Black Forest
Black Forest
The Black Forest is a wooded mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. It is bordered by the Rhine valley to the west and south. The highest peak is the Feldberg with an elevation of 1,493 metres ....
region of southern Baden
Baden
Baden is a historical state on the east bank of the Rhine in the southwest of Germany, now the western part of the Baden-Württemberg of Germany....
, who emigrated to Venezuela in 1843. Most speakers also speak Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, and the language has also acquired some Spanish loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s.
Literature
- Blanco Hernández, Marlene: Universidad Central de Venezuela. Caracas 1987.
- Redlich Perkins, Renate: Tovar German. Linguistic study of a German century alemannic dialect spoken in Venezuela. University Microfilms International. Ann Arbor, Michigan, London 1978.
- Da Rin, Denise: München 1995.
- Kanzler, Samuel Briceño: Tovar, o. J. (Title in German translation: ).
External links
- Informationen über Colonia Tovar bei www.venezuelatuya.com
- Ethnologue report for Alemán Coloniero Fotos, Audios and language on SWR.de Informations on Colonia Tovar bei www.margaritainfo.com Report on the village of Colonia Tovar. People speak there a special german slang "alemannisch" Website of Colonia Tovar