Northern Bavarian is a dialect of Bavarian, together with Central Bavarian and Southern Bavarian. Bavarian is mostly spoken in the Upper Palatinate, although not in Regensburg, which is a primarily Central Bavarian–speaking area, according to a linguistic survey done in the late 1980s. According to the same survey, Northern Bavarian is also spoken in Upper Franconia, as well as in some areas in Upper and Lower Bavaria, such as in the areas around Eichstätt and Kelheim. Few speakers remained in the Czech Republic, mostly concentrated around Aš and Železná Ruda, at the time of the survey, but considering the time which has passed since the survey, the dialect may be extinct in those places today. If it still exists there, it would include the ostegerländische Dialektgruppe. Ethnologue estimates that there were 9,000 speakers of Bavarian in the Czech Republic in 2005, but does not clarify if these were Northern Bavarian speakers.
According to the same linguistic survey, the dialect is flourishing in the areas where it is spoken, despite the fact that most speakers actively use Standard German. In the south of the area where Northern Bavarian is spoken, Central Bavarian is said to have higher prestige, and Northern Bavarian characteristics are therefore not as visible as in the north, where speakers even tend to use a heavy Northern Bavarian accent when speaking German.
Phonology
Vowels
Northern Bavarian has 8 vowels:
And 11 diphthongs:
Before , are rounded to .
In southern varieties of Northern Bavarian the diphthongs are realized with an opener offset, i.e. .
An interesting aspect of the diphthongs are the so-called reversed diphthongs, or in German, gestürzte Diphthonge. They are called so because the Middle High German diphthongs became ( became after unrounding) in Northern Bavarian, while they generally became in Standard German. Compare Standard German Brief , Bruder , Brüder and Northern Bavarian , , .
The Northern Bavarian diphthong corresponds to the Middle High German and Standard German . Compare Standard German Schaf , Stroh and Northern Bavarian , . Likewise, the Northern Bavarian diphthong corresponds to the Middle High German and Standard German and by unrounding to . Compare Standard German Schnee , böse with Northern Bavarian , .
In many Northern Bavarian variants, nasalization is increasingly common.
Consonants
Northern Bavarian has about 33 consonants:
is realized as either or when occurring postvocally.
may be syllabic, as in Northern Bavarian ; compare Standard German Mühle.
Grammar
Nouns
Gender
All nouns in Northern Bavarian have one of three genders: feminine, masculine and neuter. Many nouns have the same gender as in Standard German, but there are many exceptions. An example is Benzin, which is neuter in Standard German, but masculine in Northern Bavarian. Another example is Butter, which is feminine in Standard German, but it can be all three genders in Northern Bavarian depending on your location and local variation of the dialect.
Case
As in Standard German there are four cases in Northern Bavarian: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative. The genitive case, however, is uncommon and is commonly replaced either with the dative and a possessive pronoun or with the preposition von and the dative, e.g. , or father's house. An exception is the genitive instead of the dative after the singular possessive pronouns, e.g. , which is as correct as behind me. Prepositions take the dative or the accusative, but not the genitive, e.g. (formally ) despite the rain. The dative ending -m often sounds like the accusative ending -n (see the previous example), so that these two cases are not distinguishable.
Inflection
Nouns in Northern Bavarian are inflected for number, and to a lesser extent, case. Inflecting for number is common across all three genders, and especially umlaut is productive, in particular in masculine nouns. The most common plural marker in feminine nouns is , while it is with most neuter nouns. Many nouns, across the genders, are the same in the plural as in the singular.
English head, Standard German Kopf, Northern Bavarian sg. m. > pl. English cat, Standard German Katze, Northern Bavarian sg. f. > pl. English house, Standard German Haus, Northern Bavarian sg. n. > pl.