East Brabantian

East Brabantian () is one of the main divisions of the Brabantian dialect group recognized by the "Woordenboek van de Brabantse dialecten". East Brabantian dialects are mainly spoken in the eastern part of the province of North Brabant. Classifications of Brabantian recognize it as a separate dialect group. Sometimes it is called Meierijs, after the Bailiwick of Den Bosch.
East Brabantian dialects are further subdivided into Kempenlands (in a large area east and south east of Eindhoven, including Arendonk and Lommel in Belgium), North Meierijs (in an area south of 's-Hertogenbosch into Eindhoven), Peellands (in Helmond and surroundings), Geldrops and Heeze-and-Leendes. The last two are small local dialects that are found as separate groups in few other classifications.
Not included in East Brabantian are Maaslands (including Bosch which is placed in Central North Brabantian, although other classification systems also describe it as East Brabantian), Land-van-Cuijks (which has many similarities with neighboring South Guelderish and the Northern Limburgish dialects), Kleverlands (a South Guelderish dialect) and Budels (linguistically a Limburgish dialect).
Characteristics.
East Brabantian dialects are distinct from the more western variants, Central Brabantian and West Brabantian, and also from dialects of southern Brabant like Southern Brabantian, Kempens and Getelands. Some peculiarities are typical eastern and shared with the Limburgish dialects while others only occur locally.
East Brabantian dialects have been somewhat influenced by the Cologne language expansion and thus share some features with it which are absent from western varieties. Such differences include umlaut in diminutives and the conjugation of Germanic strong verbs (like in Limburgish). Typical of East Brabantian are forms such as vs Dutch "believe", "bruur" vs Dutch "broer" "brother" and "zuke" vs Dutch "zoeken" "search". Also diminutives such as (with i-umlaut of the stem vowel) vs Dutch "little man" and "jeske" vs Dutch "jasje" "little coat". Conjugations such as "velt" vs Dutch "valt" "falls" are typically East Brabantian. (Compare Standard German "fällt", also showing the effects of the final *"i" in the reconstructed Common West Germanic protoform *"fallidi".)