or simply Kirchröadsj, literally 'Kerkradish', Limburgish: Kirkräödsj [ˈkɪʀ(ə)kˌʀœːtʃ],[tone?]
[6] The Kerkrade dialect has many loanwords from Standard High German, a language formerly used in school and church.
As most other Ripuarian and Limburgish dialects, the Kerkrade dialect features a distinction between the thrusting tone (Dutch: stoottoon, German: Schärfung or Stoßton), which has a shortening effect on the syllable (not shown in transcriptions in this article) and the slurring tone (Dutch: sleeptoon, German: Schleifton).
[12][13] The spelling presented here, which is to a large extent Dutch-based is used in Kirchröadsjer dieksiejoneer, the only dictionary of the Kerkrade dialect.
In turn, German-based orthographies use ⟨s⟩ for the /z/ sound, whereas ⟨z⟩ is restricted for the voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/, though it can also be spelled ⟨tz⟩.
The grapheme-phoneme correspondence is as follows: The most similar other Ripuarian dialects are those of Bocholtz, Vaals and Aachen.
A distinct East Limburgish dialect called Egelzer plat is spoken in Eygelshoven, in the north of the Kerkrade municipality.
The biggest differences between the two is the presence of the High German consonant shift in the Kerkrade dialect as well the pronunciation of the sound written ⟨g⟩ in Limburgish; in Eygelshoven, it is pronounced as in Limburgish and (southern) standard Dutch (as a voiced velar fricative), whereas in the Kerkrade dialect it is pronounced as in Colognian, as a palatal approximant (where it is spelled ⟨j⟩), except after back vowels where it is rhotacized to a voiced uvular fricative, resulting in a phonetic merger with /r/.