The Eifeler Regel (pronounced as /de/, in Luxembourgish; Letzeburgesch ˈɑɪfəlɐ ˈʀeːʑəl/; in Luxembourgish also spelled Äifler Regel in Luxembourgish; Letzeburgesch pronounced as /ˈæːɪflɐ-/) or Eifel rule is a linguistic phenomenon originally documented in the dialects of the Eifel region in the far west of Germany[1] during the late 19th century. The rule describes a phonological process in the languages which causes the deletion of final pronounced as /[n]/ in certain contexts, and may be reflected in spelling.
More generally called n-apocope, it appears to varying extents in all dialects of the Western group of High German, including West Central German (notably Luxembourgish, Colognian and Hessian), High Franconian and Alemannic; and excludes all dialects of the Eastern group, such as Austro-Bavarian and the colonial dialects east of the Elbe-Saale line (including Standard German and Yiddish). N-apocope is a linguistic change originating in speech during the Middle High German period.[2]
The Eifel rule is pervasive in Luxembourgish as -n is a common ending for verbs, plural nouns and function words. Since Luxembourgish spelling strives for phonetic accuracy, n-deletion is also reflected in the standard orthography. The rule can be described as follows:
den Apel ("the apple"), den Yves (male name), wann ech ginn ("when I go")
Ouerenentzündung ("ear infection")
/n/: den Noper (“the neighbour”)
/t/: den Tuerm ("the tower")
/d/: den Dag (“the day”), hien drénkt ("he drinks"), fënnefandrësseg ("thirty-five")
/ts/ (possible spellings include z, c or ts): den Zuch (“the train”), den Cäsar (“Caesar [Julius Caesar]”), den Tsunami (“the tsunami”), Gromperenzalot ("potato salad")
/tʃ/ (possible spellings include tsch, ch or c): an Tschechien (“in Czechia”), den Chip (“the chip [microchip]”), den Cello (“the cello”)
/dʒ/ (possible spellings include dsch, j or g): den Dschungel (“the jungle”), vun Jamaika (“from Jamaica”), den George Washington (“George Washington”)
/h/: den Hond (“the dog”), wann hie schléift ("when he sleeps")
Ech hunn (wéi gëschter) vill geschafft. ("I have (like yesterday) done a lot of work.")
Note that the prefix on- is not affected by the Eifel rule, e.g. onvergiesslech ("unforgettable"). At the same time, certain content words do undergo n-deletion, e.g. Wäi(n) (wine), Stee(n) (stone), geschwë(nn) (soon).
When final -n is dropped from a plural noun whose singular form ends in -e (which occurs mostly in loanwords), a diaeresis must be used to distinguish the plural, e.g.: Chance (singular in Luxembourgish; Letzeburgesch pronounced as /ˈʃɑ̃ːs/), Chancen (plural, full form in Luxembourgish; Letzeburgesch pronounced as /ˈʃɑ̃ːsən/), Chancë (plural + Eifel rule in Luxembourgish; Letzeburgesch pronounced as /ˈʃɑ̃ːsə/).
In Colognian, the Eifeler Regel is of lesser impact than further south. This is due in part to slight morphological differences between the Moselle Franconian languages of the upper Eifel regions (High Eifel and Schneifel), and the Ripuarian languages of the North- and Vordereifel region and the Cologne Lowland, to which Colognian belongs.
There are several ways to write Colognian, and the Eifeler Regel may be reflected in writing when it follows phonetic reality, but more often is not, since the majority of people do not write very phonetically.
In comparison to standard German, Colognian is often described as having historically omitted the trailing n. This is oversimplified, and not always true. The Colognian version of liaison sometimes inserts an n. Colognian multisyllabic base words or lexemes regularly drop "-n" when some related languages, such as Standard German and Low German (but not Dutch and Limburgish) do not. Liaison is often optional, and there is hardly any liaison on stressed words within a sentence. For example, with the words bovve (up, up there) and en (in, into), one may build the phrase: bovve en der Schaaf (up there into the cupboard) which depending on stress and voice flow inside a complete sentence is spoken as either pronounced as /ˈbɔvə ʔen dɐ ˈʃaˑf/ or pronounced as /ˈbɔvən‿en dɐ ˈʃaˑf/.
The general rule is that monosyllabic words most often keep their trailing n, while otherwise -en endings are transformed to -e in Colognian unless the following word starts with a glottal stop, a dental consonant, a vowel, or an h, and neither of the two words is being stressed inside the sentence.[3] There are exceptions, the most notable being that speakers do not use liaison even if they could when speaking very slowly or solemnly, e.g. preaching or praying.
High Franconian is a transitional dialect group between the Rhine Franconian dialects of West Central German to the North and the Swabian dialects of Alemannic to the South. The High Franconian group divides into South Franconian and East Franconian. N-apocope can be documented in the following sentence from Standard German:
The comparison with the above mentioned dialects demonstrates:[4]
The Eifeler Regel (Alemannic n-apocope) applies in all variants of Alemannic in the same fashion as described for Luxembourgish and is subject to the same exceptions.[5] The earliest report on the phenomenon in Alemannic goes back to 1881.[6]
Certain southern and southeastern dialects of Low Franconian (that is, Dutch) have a similar phenomenon. It is notable in Limburgish and some areas of Brabantian, and is called the "bdht-vowel-rule". Final -n is also deleted in these dialects, except when followed by b, d, h, t or a vowel, in case of a masculine noun. This is similar to the Eifeler regel.