Kerkrade dialect phonology
This article covers the phonology of the Kerkrade dialect, a West Ripuarian language variety spoken in parts of the Kerkrade municipality in the Netherlands (including the town of Kerkrade itself) and Herzogenrath in Germany. Just like Colognian, the Kerkrade dialect is not uniform and there are some geographical differences. This article focuses on the variety spoken in the Dutch town of Kerkrade. The spelling used in this article is a Dutch-based one used in "Kirchröadsjer dieksiejoneer". Consonants. In contrast to Limburgish and Standard Dutch, but like other varieties of Ripuarian, the Kerkrade dialect was partially affected  by the High German consonant shift. For instance, the former became an affricate in word-initial and word-final positions, after historical and as well as when doubled. Thus, the word for "two" is in Standard Dutch, but in the Kerkrade dialect, almost identical to Standard German . Pitch accent. As most other Ripuarian and Limburgish dialects, the Kerkrade dialect features a distinction between the "thrusting tone" (, or ), which has a shortening effect on the syllable (not shown in transcriptions in this article) and the "slurring tone" (, ). In this article, the slurring tone is transcribed as a high tone, whereas the  thrusting tone is left unmarked. This is nothing more than a convention, as the phonetics of the Kerkrade pitch accent are severely under-researched. There are minimal pairs, for example 'wall' - 'carrot'. The pitch accent can be the only difference: