Sankt Goar line
Encyclopedia
In German linguistics, the Sankt Goar line, Das-Dat line (that), or the Was–Wat line (what) is an isogloss
Isogloss
An isogloss—also called a heterogloss —is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature...

 separating the dialects to the north, which have a /t/ in the words dat "that" and wat "what", from the dialects to the south (including standard German), which have an /s/: das, was. The line runs from east to west and crosses the river Rhine at the town of Sankt Goar
Sankt Goar
Sankt Goar is a town on the left bank of the Middle Rhine in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Sankt Goar-Oberwesel, whose seat is in the town of Oberwesel....

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See: High German consonant shift
High German consonant shift
In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases, probably beginning between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD, and was almost...

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