Zurich German

Source: Fleischer, Jürg & Stephan Schmid. 2006. Zurich German. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36(2). 243–253.

Comments: "Words can begin with a vowel; i.e. in contrast to Standard German, initial vowels are not preceded by the glottal stop [ʔ], which occurs only marginally, for example, in the reinforced negation particle [ˈnoeʔoe]/[ˈhoeʔoe] ‘nope’. Also in contrast to Standard German, unvoiced plosives before stressed vowels are not aspirated; rather, aspiration is lexically determined and typical of borrowed items, such as [pʰɒkx] ‘parcel’ or [tʰeː] ‘tea’. (Fleischer & Schmid 2006: 244). A striking structural feature of the Zurich German consonant system is that it completely lacks voiced obstruents; nevertheless, two series of homorganic obstruents are distinguished... In the present description, the terms ‘fortis’ and ‘lenis’ are employed in accordance with their traditional definition. Thus, the terms refer to two phonologically distinct series of homorganic obstruents that are both unvoiced, meaning that a feature other than [±voiced] is the phonetic correlate of the distinction (Fleischer & Schmid 2006: 245). The schwa vowel [ə] is restricted to unstressed syllables... In stressed syllables, all vowel qualities are used for both short and long phonemes with the exception of short /œ/, which has only a marginal status (Fleischer & Schmid 2006: 247)."

Contributed by: Anton Kukhto (kukhto@mit.edu)