There are slight pronunciation variations in Colognian which can be considered regional within the city,[1] and some others seemingly more reflecting social status.
Local languages of all three groups are usually not understood at once by Colognian speakers, but comparatively easily learned.
Other languages almost always spoken by Colognian speakers today are the Rhinelandic and Standard varieties of German.
Mixed language use is common today, so that in an average speakers awareness, Colognian lexemes are contrasting the two kinds of German ones as well.
Coarticulative variations cover a range from the standard English "light" [ʃ] to strongly velarized and/or pharyngealized versions.
The average Colognian [ʃ] is "darker" and often spoken with the lips more protruded than English versions.
Colognian, similar to German, Dutch, and other West Central German varieties, exhibits a phenomenon called terminal devoicing or Auslautverhärtung: in the word-final position, voiced consonant phonemes lose their voicing to become unvoiced.
Consequentially, according to the Kölsch Akadamie orthographic rules, they are written as ⟨Sigg⟩ and ⟨Sigge⟩, respectively,[8] while the more phonetic common, and Wrede, spellings write ⟨Sick⟩ and ⟨Sigge⟩, respectively.
[11] Foreign words that are neologisms are usually adopted to Colognian phonotactic rules when pronounced; for instance the English computerese term server appears as [ˈzɜːvɐ] or [ˈzœ²vɐ] in most instances, or even [ˈzɛʁfɐ] among elderly speakers, at least.