There is a German saying that sort of describes this language as „die einzige Sprache, die man auch trinken kann“, quite literally, “the only language that you can also drink”. And by drink in stereotypical German culture, one would allude to beer. Today, we will look at the language which shares its name with a particular type of beer you can find in Germany, more specifically one that is usually served in a 200ml Stange glass, in the North Rhine-Westphalian city of Cologne (or Köln).

Kölsch is a type of pale, and quite clear or bright kind of beer that can only be legally brewed in the region of Cologne. It is pretty much the Colognian version of champagne, since champagne is only champagne if it comes from that particular Champagne in France, otherwise, it is just sparkling wine.

But Kölsch has something more to it; it is a variety, and an extensively studied one by German linguists, of a Germanic language called Ripuarian. We only hear about the Kölsch variants possibly because they comprise the most number of speakers, at anywhere between 250 000 and 750 000. This alone accounts for a sizeable proportion of the one million or so native speakers of Ripuarian as a whole, and that Ripuarian consists of dozens of dialects spoken from Luxembourg and Belgium, to Wiehl in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.

The one sound that Kölsch is purported to have that is almost entirely unique is the [ɧ] sound. This is also the sound you would find in the Swedish language, especially in the southern regions. In fact, we have covered this particular sound in this essay about the Swedish “sj-“, but here, this phoneme seems to be represented in Kölsch by the letter combination ‘ch’ or ‘sch’. However, I have not really come across this sound in person, but instead, hearing the /ʃ/ or /ɕ/ sound. It seems that the presence of the Swedish “sj-” sound is poorly attested in Kölsch, and not just me going mad just to hear that very sound in person.

There is also a noticeable pattern of sound changes between German and Kölsch. For example, where German would usually use the /b/ sound, Kölsch uses the /v/ or /f/ sound. Compare words like überall in German (everywhere) with üvverall in Kölsch, bleiben (stay) in German with blieve in Kölsch, and Grab (ditch) in German with Grav in Kölsch.

Another notable sound difference is the realisation of the word-initial ‘g’ as a /j/ sound in Kölsch, and adopting other sounds depending on its position in the word. However, contrary to popular belief, Kölsch still has the /g/ sound, but is instead, represented by the digraph ‘gg’. This also devoices at the end of a word to a /k/ sound. And so, the ‘gg’ in Zigg (time, German Zeit) has a /k/ sound, but the same letters in wigger (further, German weiter) has a /g/ sound. This /g/ sound mainly replaces the /k/, /d/, and /t/ sounds found in German, but the pattern in which this occurs is not really regular. Sometimes, the German /g/ sound remains as such in Kölsch as well!

Something special that Kölsch has in contrast to German is the incorporation of a pitch-accent system. There are different kinds of terminology used here, and the realisations of these accents differ between the Ripuarian dialects. In German, these terms are geschärft (sharpened) and ungeschärft (unsharpened), or more creatively named, Tonakzent 1 and Tonakzent 2 respectively. When it comes to Kölsch, Tonakzent 1 seems to be realised as a falling tone, while Tonakzent 2 is the default tone used in speech. However, Tonakzent 1 is only used in stressed heavy syllables. These are syllables that have either long vowels or diphthongs, or a short vowel that is followed by one of the /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /r/, or /l/ sounds.

Peculiarities of Kölsch, as noted by the Akadamie för uns Kölsche Sproch, the Colognian language academy, mainly pertained to differences in grammatical patterns between Kölsch and German. This is reflected by certain mistakes in conjugation patterns that German learners of Kölsch were very likely to make, as noted by linguists as the Academy.

Within Kölsch, perhaps the most defining feature is how the genitive is realised in the dialect. There are generally two main patterns of forming the genitive, which denotes a possessor-possession relationship between nouns. The common pattern is, these are formed by compounding. Compare the following translations of “My friend’s brother” in German and Kölsch respectively:

der Bruder meines Freundes

der Broder vun mingem Fründ (literally ‘the brother from my friend’) / mingem Fründ singe Broder

The Kölsch word singe can only be used for nouns denoting a person, and so a phrase like *Däm Boch singe Ömschlag (The cover of the book, German der Umschlag des Buches) is grammatically incorrect. Instead, the particle vun is used, as in Dä Ömschlag vun däm Boch.

There is no true standard way of writing Ripuarian, but this has not stopped the Akadamie för uns Kölsche Sproch from developing an orthography for Kölsch. This comes alongside the extensive effort to document, study, and promote Kölsch as a language. On their website, they noted the particular challenges in compiling an orthography for Kölsch. One of them is trying to make the orthography as phonetic as possible, and balancing this with the variations in pronunciation by dialect and by the inflections the word receives.

This is particularly illustrated by the use of the letter ‘g’ in the Academy’s orthography, namely, with the Kölsch word for ‘eye’, Aug. In the singular, the ‘g’ in Aug takes on a /x/ sound, but in the plural, Augen, it takes a sound like /ʁ/, something that would have been transcribed as an ‘r’ in an orthography that is more faithful to how German sounds work. This leads to a table of possible sounds ‘g’ could take on.

Wikipedia seems to prefer an orthography that closely follows German orthography, which leads to Aug being potentially written as Ouch. It has also criticised the Academy’s orthography for retaining the ‘g’ and not adapting it for modern Kölsch pronunciations, showing some preference to a more phonetic approach to Kölsch orthography. The Kölsch Dag (day), for instance, is pronounced with a long ‘a’ vowel, and a /x/ for the letter ‘g’. In a more phonetic orthography closely following German rules, this would have been written as Daach. The Kölsch translation of The Little Prince that I have, however, follows the Academy’s orthography, and in the somewhat rare instances I have found Kölsch in posters and advertisements in Köln, they mainly follow the Academy’s orthography as well.

Most, if not, almost all speakers of the Ripuarian dialects are multilingual, speaking their respective dialect alongside the official language in the countries or regions in which they reside. Kölsch is no different, with speakers also being fluent in German, and perhaps another regional language. Despite the general lack of Kölsch or Ripuarian as a language medium in education, and its apparent declining proficiency in younger generations, Kölsch is still lively. It has extensive documentation and studies, and on a more cultural side, a rich theater and literature scene with some performances being only done in the dialect. All of this is made possible in spite of the lack of a standardised orthography for Ripuarian. Kölsch, like the beer itself, is truly the pride of Köln, and really is the language you can drink.

Afterword

I have actually been to Köln twice, the first being in 2014 and the second being 2022. My first time there was part of a student exchange programme my school had, which saw us visiting places in Bonn and Köln. I never quite heard the dialect spoken in the family I was staying with in Bonn (it is called Bönnsch), though admittedly, I was quite new to the language at the time and so, I did not know what exactly to pick out. It was not until 2022 when I started to become more attentive to the linguistic patterns of the language, and found greater ease in picking out the differences between written or printed Kölsch and German. And yes, I did have some Kölsch when I was there.