Bergish dialects

Bergish is a collective name for a group of West Germanic dialects spoken in the Bergisches Land region east of the Rhine in western Germany. The name is commonly used among its speakers, but is not of much linguistic relevance, because the varieties belong to several quite distinct groups inside the continental West Germanic dialect continuum. As usual inside a dialect continuum, neighbouring varieties have a high degree mutual intelligibility and share many similarities while the two more distant ones may be completely mutually unintelligible and considerably different. Therefore, speakers usually perceive the differences in their immediate neighbourhood as merely dialectal oddities of an otherwise larger, solid group or language that they are all part of, such as "Bergish". Bergish is itself commonly classified as a form of "Rhinelandic", which in turn is part of German. Bergish stricto sensu is the eastmost part of the Limburgish language group, which extends far beyond the rivers Rhine and Maas into the Netherlands and Belgium. Bergish strictu sensu is located in the North West. It is also part of the East Limburgish group, that is, the varieties of Limbugish spoken in Germany. They combine Low Franconian properties with some Ripuarian properties and are seen as the transitory dialects between them in the dialect continuum of Dutch and German. The Bergish varieties in the northern areas are also referred to as parts of Meuse-Rhenish, which exclusively refers to the Low Franconian varieties, that are Limburgish including Bergish.

In the south of Bergish is the Benrath line, border to the Ripuarian variety Upper Bergish or East Ripuarian. Bergish is also seen as part of Meuse-Rhenish, which names a somewhat larger number of dialects than the three groups having names with Bergish.

As opposed to linguists, laymen sometimes call their local Bergisch variety simply Low Bergish or "Platt" (de:Platt); they do not distinguish between the dialect groups, when talking about local languages. People from outside the Rhineland often make even less distinctions and use the term Rhinelandic for the vernacular of an even larger region than Meuse-Rhenish. The Bergish dialects were called only "Bergish" by early dialect geographers of Germany of the 19th century.

Some dialect geographers, e.g. Dr. Georg Cornelissen use the term East Bergish for a quite small part of not only Bergish in the north-east. It combines features of the Limburgish (predominantly), the Westphalian group and the South Guelderish (Zuid-Gelders or Cleverlands) group. Zuid-Gelders covers much of the Lower Rhine area in Germany and extends into the Central Netherlands. It is a Low Franconian group, whereas Westphalian belongs to the Low German group. "Bergish" varieties in a broader sense belong to another group following some dialect geographers of today South Bergish, or Upper Bergish, varieties are part of the Ripuarian group, where they form the East Ripuarian subgroup. Contrasting the Bergish groups strictu sensu, Ripuarian Bergish varieties belong to the Middle German group, and thus are High German varieties, together with for example Austro-Bavarian and Swiss German, among many others.

Bergish is the rightmost, or eastern part of the Limburgish group