ISCA Archive Interspeech 2023
ISCA Archive Interspeech 2023

Segmental features of Brazilian (Santa Catarina) Hunsrik

Dennis Hoffmann, Maria O'Reilly

This paper explores the segmentals of Brazilian Hunsrik, Santa Catarina (SC). The account proposed here is merely the starting point for a more comprehensive analysis of this unique, under-resourced dialect of German for which no written standard and only limited prior linguistic descriptions exist. The goal is to characterise the segmental features of SC Hunsrik and compare them to those reported for the Hunsrik of Rio Grande do Sul (RS). The description is based on two Praat-analysed recordings of three speakers: one saying prayers, and two chatting about daily chores. The recurrent features include vowel raising, de-rounding and schwa epenthesis; consonantal aspects involve obstruent voicing assimilation, consonant deletion and /l/-velarisation. The next steps will involve unravelling the features of German Hunsrück and the Brazilian Portuguese influences as well as analysing the dialect's prosody.