ABSTRACT
Since Bavarian, measured by the extent of German up to 1945, made up one-sixth of the whole of the German-speaking area and a quarter of the High German speech area the Bavarian dialect group is the largest German dialect group. Bavarian extends from eastern Austria, with some small western Hungarian border areas, to Arlberg, the border between Tyrol and the most westerly Austrian province (Bundesland) of Vorarlberg, and in the west to the river Lech as well as from the Salurn gorge in South Tyrol in the south to Markneukirchen in the southern Vogtland in the north. After the resettlement in 1945–6 of German speakers from the border areas of Czechoslovakia in west Bohemia (Egerland), south Bohemia and south Moravia, Bavarian dialects are now restricted to the following areas: Upper and Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz) in the FRG; the southern Vogtland around Markneukirchen in the GDR; and Austria except for the westernmost Bundesland Vorarlberg, but with the Samnaun area in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. In addition Bavarian is spoken in the following areas where German is not used as a national language: in some border settlements as well as the mountain area around Sopron/ Ödenburg and the heathland around Moson/Wieselburg in west Hungary and in the South Tyrol (in the province of Bozen/Bolzano) in northern Italy.
