ABSTRACT
The area whose dialects are to be described in this section is known, in German dialectology, as ‘Upper Saxony’ and its dialects are termed ‘Upper Saxon’ (Obersächsisch). The speakers themselves call their speech ‘Saxon’ (Sächsisch), rightly omitting the word ‘Upper’, which is merely intended to differentiate it from ‘Low Saxon’ (Niedersächsisch) in the terminology of dialectologists. The area lies in the south-east of the German Democratic Republic and coincides approximately with the former Kingdom of Saxony. It is identical with the present-day administrative areas (Bezirke) of Leipzig, Dresden and Karl-Marx-Stadt, and is the area whose dialects are being investigated by the research section Wörterbuch der obersächsischen Mundarten for the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Leipzig.
