Hamburgisch or Hamburger dialect (German: Hamburger Platt) is a group of Northern Low Saxonvarieties spoken in Hamburg, Germany. Occasionally, the term Hamburgisch is also used for Hamburg Missingsch, a variety of standard German with Low Saxon substrates. These are urban dialects that have absorbed numerous English and Dutch loanwords, for instance Törn ‘trip’ (< turn) and suutje ‘gently’ (< Dutch zoetjes).
German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol (Italy), the German-speaking Community of Belgium, and Liechtenstein. It is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg and a co-official language in the Opole Voivodeship in Poland. The languages which are most similar to German are the other members of the West Germanic language branch: Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German/Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish. There are also strong similarities in vocabulary with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, although those belong to the North Germanic group. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English.
Northern Low Saxon is a West Low German dialect.
In sociolinguistics, a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, registers, styles, or other forms of language, as well as a standard variety. The use of the word "variety" to refer to the different forms avoids the use of the term language, which many people associate only with the standard language, and the term dialect, which is often associated with non-standard varieties thought of as less prestigious or "correct" than the standard. Linguists speak of both standard and non-standard (vernacular) varieties. "Lect" avoids the problem in ambiguous cases of deciding whether two varieties are distinct languages or dialects of a single language.
Hamburg is pronounced [ˈhambɔrç] in these dialects, with a "ch" similar to that in the standard German word Milch. Typical of the Hamburg dialects and other Lower Elbe dialects is the pronunciation (and spelling) eu (pronounced oi) for the diphthong /œɪ/ (written öö, öh or ö), e.g.
in Hamburg
elsewhere
standard German
English
keupen [ˈkʰɔɪpm]
köpen [ˈkʰœɪpm]
kaufen [ˈkaʊ̯fn̩]
to buy
scheun [ʃɔɪn]
schöön [ʃœɪn]
schön [ʃøːn]
beautiful
However, as in most other Low Saxon (Low German) dialects, the long monophthong /øː/ is pronounced [ø] (as in French peu), for instance Kööm ~ Kœm[kʰøːm] ‘caraway’.
The close-mid front rounded vowel, or high-mid front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. Acoustically, it is a close-mid front-central rounded vowel. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is ⟨ø⟩, a lowercase letter o with a diagonal stroke through it, borrowed from Danish, Norwegian, and Faroese, which sometimes use the letter to represent the sound. The symbol is commonly referred to as "o, slash" in English.
The Low Saxon language in Hamburg is divided in several subdialects, e.g.
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