Palatine German or
Pfaelzisch (
Pälzisch; ) is a
West Franconian dialect of
German which is spoken in the
Rhine Valley roughly in an area between the cities of
Zweibrücken,
Kaiserslautern,
Alzey,
Worms,
Ludwigshafen am Rhein,
Mannheim,
Heidelberg,
Speyer,
Landau,
Wörth am Rhein and the border to the
Alsace region in
France but also beyond.
Pennsylvania German, or Pennsylvania Dutch is descended primarily from the Palatine German dialects spoken by Germans who immigrated to North America from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries and who chose to maintain their native language.
Danube Swabians in
Croatia and
Serbia also use many elements of it. Normally, one distinguishes the Pfälzisch spoken in the western part of the Palatinate (Westpfälzisch) and the Pfälzisch spoken in the eastern part of the Palatinate (Vorderpfälzisch). Some examples of the differences between
High German and Pfälzisch are:
A few examples of sentence pronunciation in Vorderpfälzisch would be:
In Westpfälzisch:
Ich hann's'm schunn verzehlt, awwer er had mer's net geglaabt.