Geographical extent
The language area between the Weser and Elbe rivers stretches from the Lüneburg Heath in the north to the Harz mountain range and Weser Uplands in the south. It comprises Hanover Region, Brunswick and Calenberg Land as well as the Magdeburg Börde, including the cities of Hanover, Braunschweig, Hildesheim, Göttingen and Magdeburg. It roughly corresponds with the historic region of Eastphalia.
Classification
Eastphalian as a separate dialect was determined by 19th century linguistics, tracing it back to Old Saxon variants spoken in eastern parts of the medieval stem duchy of Saxony. Towards the Elbe region in the southeast, the language area is increasingly influenced by the High German consonant shift.
Features
The most prominent characteristic in Eastphalian are the object pronouns mek and dek in contrast to mi and di in Northern Lower Saxon, respectively for High German mir and mich resp. dir and dich), as well as öhne, ösch/össek and jöck (Northern Low German em, u[n]s, jo [ju], High German ihm/ihn, uns, euch). Although Eastphalian agrees with many Low German dialects (with exceptions, e.g., in southern Westphalian) in that the dative has coincided with the accusative in the forms mentioned, its peculiarity is shown by the fact that the accusative has prevailed over the dative in all of these forms (in Northern Low Saxon it is the other way around). In Eastphalian, an accusative of the first person plural has been preserved with the form üsch and southern Eastphalian össek (cf. Old High German unsih, Old English ūsic [besides ūs], also High Alemannic üs, südbairisch ins in Upper German).
The e-apocope, i.e. the omission of the -e at the end of the word, as took place in North Lower Saxon, was entirely absent in Eastphalian. Thus, the ablaut -e in words like Sprake (language, speech) and Wiele (while) remains and is not dropped. Furthermore, the -e is also preserved in nouns in the nominative case, where High German no longer has them either, such as in Harte (heart), Frue (woman), Herre (man), Bäre (bear). The same is true for many adjectives, such as dicke (fat, thick) and wisse (clear, fast; cf. German gewiss) and substantivizing endings such as -unge and -nisse, as well as for the older form -ig(e) ['ɪjə]/ ['ɪç], which developed from Middle Low German -inge. The -e ending has also survived for nouns in the dative case. Thus, for example, uppen Felle (on the field).[2]
Another feature of Eastphalian is the residual preservation of the prefix ge- as e- in the participle II (past participle) of verbs; since this prefix has also been lost in the very Northern regions of Eastphalia, e. g., for example, in Celle its wään ("been") is opposed to southern ewää(se)n [əˈvɛː(z)n̩], or ewest [əˈvɛst]. However, this prefix is dropped if the previous word already ends in a schwa like -e or -er.[3]
Another striking difference between Eastphalian and all other Low German dialects is the absence (or undoing) of sound expansion in open syllable before -el, -en, -er in the following syllable, e. g. Eastphalian Löppel [ˈlœpl̩], betten [ˈbɛtn̩], Pepper [ˈpɛpɐ] ("spoon, bit, pepper") versus Northern Low Saxon Läpel [ˈlɛːpl̩], bäten [ˈbɛːtn̩], Päper [ˈpɛːpɐ].[4]
Eastphalian also takes its own position in equalizing Old Saxon phonetic positions, especially in reducing vowels distinguished in open syllables, by simplifying more than Westphalian (which has no reduction in its southern dialects), but not going as far as the core area of Northern Lower Saxon (where only three of the original eight vowel phonemes remain). Despite the diversity of the sounds in detail, most of the Eastphalian dialects thus have a common sound system. (In this case, besides the Heide-Eastphalian also the Göttingisch-Grubenhagen-Eastphalian - which in this case is in the same position as the East-Westphalian - is left out).
Another thing to mention is that prepositions in most of Eastphalian do not contain an umlaut. These include for [ˈfɔr], unner [ˈʊnər] and over (Hildesheim) [ˈɛo̯vər], as opposed to Northern Lower Saxon för, ünner and över.
