Welche

This article is about the language. For the French official, see Charles Welche.

Welche is a little-spoken Gallo-Romance dialect of Alsace. A Lorrain dialect, it is closely related to French by the Oïl group. Its varieties include those of Bruche, Villé, Lièpvre, Kaysersberg and Orbey.

Map of dialects in Alsace-Lorraine. Welche is included within the Lorrain-speaking area (orange).

The name Welche is a French spelling of Welsh, a word from Germanic languages such as English, used originally to refer to Celtic speakers such as the Welsh, and later to Latin speakers after Latin was imposed on the Celts. The word Welsh has been adopted in Latin dialects (such as French) to refer exclusively to other Latin dialects (such as Welche). Welche, Welsh and English are all distantly related through the Indo-European group and language-mixing.

Vocabulary

Being close to German-speaking areas, a lot of words have been borrowed from German.

See also

• Language policy of France
• Names related to the word Welche

External links

• https://web.archive.org/web/00000000000000if_/http://juillot.home.cern.ch/juillot/ban_de_la_roche.html - variety of Ban de la Roche
• http://www.lapoutroie.fr/decouvrir/patois-welche.htm Welche patois (in French)
• http://badonpierre.free.fr/salmpierre/tome3zf.html glossary (in French)