Saarland
Saarland is one of the 16 states of Germany. The capital is Saarbrücken. It has an area of 2570 km² and 1,045,000 inhabitants. In both area and population, it is the smallest of the German Flächenländer ("area states"), i.e., those that are not city-states (Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg). Its location on the border between France and Germany has given Saarland a unique history. It was the only state to join the Federal Republic of Germany between 1949 and the German reunification in 1990.
Economy
Important income sources are automobile industry, steel industry, coal mining, ceramic industry and computer science and information systems industry.
In 2005 Saarland had the highest economic growth in GDP among German states.
Language
People in the Saarland speak Rhine Franconian (in the southeast, very similar to that dialect spoken in the western part of the Palatinate) and Moselle Franconian (in the northwest, very similar to that dialect spoken along the Moselle River and the cities of Trier or even in Luxembourg), dialects of German. Outside of the Saarland, specifically the Rhine-Franconian variant spoken in the Landeshauptstadt Saarbrücken is generally considered to be the Saarland dialect. The two dialect regions are mainly separated by the "das/ dat" isogloss. In the northwestern portion of the state, including cities such as Saarlouis, standard German "das" is pronounced with a final "t" instead of an "s".
In general, both dialects are an integral part of the “Saarlandish” identity and thus a strong source of local patriotism.
Both dialects, even more so in their respective Saarland flavour, share many characteristic features, some of which will be explained below.
Women and girls are often referred to using the neuter grammatical gender, es, with the pronunciation being something like Ähs. Ähs hat mir's gesaat (it told me so, instead of she told me so; vs. High German: Sie hat es mir gesagt). This stems from the word Mädchen (girl) being neuter in German (es is correct in German when referring to words like Mädchen but would not be used by itself in reference to a woman).
The conjunctive in Rhine Franconian is normally composed with the words dääd (High German “tät” = “would do”) or gäng (“would go”) as auxiliary verbs: Isch dääd saan, dass... (“I would say that...”) instead of the High German Ich würde sagen, dass....
Declension is rather different:
The genitive case does not exist at all and is entirely replaced by constructs with the dative case.
In most instances, a word is not altered when cast into the dative case. Exceptions are mostly pronouns.
The same holds for the accusative case. Even more so, it is accepted practice to use the nominative case instead of the accusative.
Diphthongs are almost non-existent. The Saarlandish variant of a High-German word that contains a diphthong usually will have a long vowel in its place. Moreover, the vowels ö and ü do not exist in the dialect. They are generally replaced by e and i respectively.
Both the Rhein-Franconian and Mosel-Franconian dialects (and Luxemburgish) have merged the palatal fricative "ich" sound with the post-alveolar fricative (the sound in "schule") causing minimal pairs such as "Kirche" and "Kirsche" to be pronounced in the same way.
French has had a considerable influence on the vocabulary, although the pronunciation of imported French words usually is quite different from their original. Popular examples comprise Trottwaa (from trottoir), Fissääl (from ficelle), and the imperative or greeting aalleh! (from allez!).
The English phrase My house is green is pronounced almost the same (in the Rhine Franconian variant): Mei Haus is grien. The main difference lies in the pronunciation of the r sound.
Regional beer brewer Karlsberg has taken advantage of the Saarlandish dialect to create clever advertising for its staple product, UrPils. Examples include a trio of men enjoying a beer, flanked by baby carriages, the slogan reading "Mutter schafft" (meaning "Mom's at work" in Saarlandish, but plays on the High German word "Mutterschaft", or "motherhood"); another depicts a trio of men at a bar, with one realizing his beer has been drunk by one of the others, the slogan reading "Kenner war's" (meaning "It was no one" [Keiner war es] in Saarlandish, but playing on the High German word "Kenner", or "connoisseur", translating to "It was a connoisseur"); a third shows an empty beer crate in the middle of outer space, the text reading "All" (meaning "empty" in Saarlandish, but playing on the same High German word meaning "outer space").
German is the official and predominant spoken language in Germany. It is one of 23 official languages in the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the European Commission, along with English and French. Recognised native minority languages in Germany are Danish, Sorbian, Romany, and Frisian. They are officially protected by the ECRML. The most used immigrant languages are Turkish, Polish, the Balkan languages, and Russian.