Sittard dialect

The Sittard dialect belongs to East Limburgish, which means it has a postalveolar consonant at the onset of words beginning with clusters such as sl and st, in contrast with other variants of Limburgish such as Maastrichtian and in Dutch.

The most important characteristic which distinguishes the dialect of Sittard from adjacent Limburgish dialects is the so-called Sittard diphthongization, i.e. the replacement of the close-mid monophthongs ee, eu and oo with the wide diphthongs ei, ui and ou in some words such as neit ("not"), veil ("fall") beier ("beer") and awd ("old"). It is largely the same as the Polder Dutch phenomenon in Standard Dutch, though it does not affect the original closing diphthongs /ɛi, œy, ɔu/ and it is extended to the environment before /ʁ/ (where an epenthetic schwa is inserted before the consonant). This phenomenon was first examined thoroughly in the first half of the 1940s by Willy Dols, who showed that this Sittard diphthongization typically occurred in syllables with a push tone. New research at the beginning of the 21st century has shown that the diphthongization once served to emphasize the difference in vowel length which distinguishes syllables with a push tone from those with a dragging tone.[1][2][3]

• Belemans, Rob & Keulen, Ronny (2002): Taal in stad en land. Venloos, Roermonds en Sittards ISBN 90-12-09014-8