High Alemannic is a branch of Alemannic German spoken in the westernmost Austrian state of Vorarlberg and in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Intelligibility of these dialects to non-Alemannic speakers tends to be limited.
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High Alemannic in the context of German-speaking Switzerland
The German-speaking part of Switzerland (German: Deutschschweiz [ˈdɔʏtʃ.ʃvaɪts] ; French: Suisse alémanique; Italian: Svizzera tedesca; Romansh: Svizra tudestga) comprises about 65 percent of Switzerland (North Western Switzerland, Eastern Switzerland, Central Switzerland, most of the Swiss Plateau and the greater part of the Swiss Alps).
The variety of the German language spoken in Switzerland is called Swiss German which refers to any of the Alemannic dialects and which are divided into Low, High and Highest Alemannic. The only exception within German-speaking Switzerland is the municipality of Samnaun where an Austro-Bavarian dialect is spoken.
High Alemannic in the context of Zurich German
Zurich German (natively Züritüütsch [ˈtsyrityːtʃ] ; Standard German: Zürichdeutsch) is the High Alemannic dialect spoken in the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. Its area covers most of the canton, with the exception of the parts north of the Thur and the Rhine, which belong to the areal of the northeastern (Schaffhausen and Thurgau) Swiss dialects.
Zurich German was traditionally divided into six sub-dialects, now increasingly homogenised owing to larger commuting distances:
High Alemannic in the context of Brünig-Napf-Reuss line
The Brünig-Napf-Reuss line forms a geographical boundary in traditional Swiss culture (Kulturgrenze). Running from the Brünig Pass along the Napf region to the Reuss (which joins the Aare at Brugg), it partly separates western (Bernese German) and eastern (Zurich German) varieties of High Alemannic, although some places east of the line belong to the western dialect group (Schwyz, Zug). The line runs across the cantons of Lucerne and Aargau.
The concept was first proposed by Richard Weiss in 1947, and it reflects the cultural situation in Switzerland as established by ethnographic field work during the early 20th century.Some historians and ethnographers argued that this cultural boundary is of greater importance historically than the French-German language boundary (the Röstigraben), even though it is widely admitted that the "line" doesn't form a sharp division but especially in its northern part "fans out" into a gradient.