High German subdivides into Upper German (green) and Central German (blue), and is distinguished from Low Franconian and Low German (yellow). The main isoglosses, the Benrath and Speyer lines are marked in black.
An 'isogloss' is the geographical boundary of a certain
linguistic feature, e.g. the pronunciation of a
vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature. Major
dialects are typically demarcated by whole bundles of isoglosses, e.g. the
Benrath line that distinguishes
High German from the other
West Germanic languages; or the
La Spezia-Rimini Line which divides the eastern
Romance languages from the western ones. Undoubtedly, the largest well-known isogloss is the
Centum-Satem isogloss, which traditionally separates the
Indo-European languages into two distinct categories.
A major isogloss in American English is the
North-
Midland isogloss, which demarcates numerous linguistic features, including the
Northern Cities vowel shift: regions north of the line (including
western New York;
Cleveland, Ohio;
lower Michigan; northern
Illinois; and eastern
Wisconsin) are subject to the shift and regions south of the line (including
Pennsylvania, central and southern
Ohio, and most of
Indiana) are not.
The name is inspired by
contour lines or
isopleths such as
isobar, etc.; however, the isogloss separates rather than connects points of equal language (perhaps one could say it connects points of indefinite language).
See also
★
Benrath line
★
Centum-Satem isogloss
★
Dialect
★
Dialectology
★
Dialect continuum
External links
★
An example of an isogloss in Southern England.
★ ''
Beyond the Isogloss: The Isograph in Dialect Topography:'' A discussion of the shortcomings and oversimplifications of using isoglosses.
★ ''
On Some Acoustic Correlates of Isoglossy,'' a humorous analysis of Russian isoglossy.
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