Danube Bavarian

The Danube Bavarians speak Central Bavarian dialects of Upper German along the Isar and Danube from Passau through Linz to Vienna. Their ancestors were the Baiuvarii, a Germanic people first recorded in the 500s in the former Roman province of Raetia, their name read as inhabitants of the land of the Boii, the Celtic tribe before Rome.

The first documented duke, Garibald I of the Agilolfing house, ruled from Regensburg from 555; by the 700s Austro-Bavarian speech was established, its split from Alemannic dialects marked from the 1100s. Henry the Lion founded Munich in 1158, and in 1156 the Eastern March became the Duchy of Austria, fixing a border between western and eastern Bavarian speech, the latter including Viennese German.

After the fall of Henry the Lion the Wittelsbachs received Bavaria in 1180, its dukes becoming prince-electors in 1623. Central Bavarian remained the everyday speech of townsmen and peasants on both sides of the border, while Standard German served church, chancery and print.