When I lived in Germany a person from Hamburg could not understand

[Synicus Maximus]

a person from Frankfurt if they used their daily dialect. They would have to speak formal High German to understand each other.

[havocmom]

1. actually, I knew that

And must say, interesting OP

[gratuitous]

2. Sprecken zee Doitch, baby

Or getten zee fock out!

Americans are so weird, n'est-ce pas?

[Odin2005]

3. I It's very hard for me to understand Deep South folks and working class Londoners.

English is breaking up so fast it's freaky, and linguist Bill Labov, the foremost expect on American English dialects, proved pver 30 years ago that the mass media, contrary to popular belief, is not leading to the Americans becoming more similar in speech.

[William Z. Foster]

15. yes?

I think you are knowledgeable on this subject from what I have read tonight. It seems to me that it is getting harder to find the old regional accents. Are you saying that the opposite is happening, that English is not becoming more homogenized but going the other way?

[Odin2005]

18. Yes, it's diversifying.

There are currently 3 great regional shifts in vowel pronunciation in the US, the Northern Cities Shift in the Great Lakes region and Upper Midwest, the Southern Vowel Shift (commonly called the Southern Drawl), and the California Vowel Shift (Come and gahg me with a spyoon!)

What is actually happening is that the old dialects of the east coast are being absorbed into the diverging larger dialect regions, not into General American.

[William Z. Foster]

19. interesting, thanks

I will listen for that. I have a pretty good ear for it and travel a lot - can distinguish Chicago from Detroit, between Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota for example.

[Hannah Bell]

23. but there were more regional dialects, so that absorption still implies fewer dialects, yes?

[Odin2005]

27. Yes, but those dialects will continue diverging from each other

And eventually become separate languages.

[Hannah Bell]

28. doubtful so long as a national language community enforced by media continues to exist, i think.

[Odin2005]

29. No, what will develop is diglossia.

Standard English will become like Modern Standard Arabic, an archaic standard natively spoken by nobody.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia

The dialect which is the original mother tongue is almost always held in low esteem; it is of low prestige. Its spheres of use involve informal, interpersonal communication: conversation in the home, among friends, in marketplaces. In some diglossias, this vernacular dialect is virtually unwritten. Those who try to give it a literature may be severely criticized or even persecuted. The other dialect is held in high esteem and is devoted to written communication and formal spoken communication, such as university instruction, primary education, sermons, and speeches by government officials. It is usually not possible to acquire proficiency in the formal, "high" dialect without formal study of it. Thus in those diglossic societies which are also characterized by extreme inequality of social classes, most people are not proficient in speaking the high dialect, and if the high dialect is grammatically different enough, as in the case of Arabic diglossia, then these uneducated classes cannot understand most of the public speeches they might hear on television and radio. The high prestige dialect (or language) tends to be the more formalised, and its forms and vocabulary often 'filter down' into the vernacular, though often in a changed form.

And then Standard English will start the slow transformation into a classical language, as the various dialects part ways.

[Hannah Bell]

30. Why do you think regional dialects (& ones which vary but little from "standard" to boot)

are going to become distinct languages?

what social circumstances do you imagine are going to lead to that result?

There's no parallel between the social conditions that created the situation with written/spoken arabic & current social conditions in the US - imo. do you think there is?

serious question, i'm trying to understand your reasoning.

[Odin2005]

42. The mass media does not stop local lingustic change.

Each of the various dialects will get farther and farther from Standard English over time. Sure, they are not that far now, but give it a few hundred years. I am an educated person, who certainly knows what is correct in the standard language, but it everyday speech I use forms that would give a Grammar Nazi the vapors, everyone around here, for example, has the non-standard past participles Boughten, Caughten, Taughten, Soughten, Foughten, etc. and tend to regularize the "fly-flew-flown" type of strong verbs into normal weak verbs with a -ed ending.

[Hannah Bell]

49. oh, you're talking in terms of hundreds of years. i think there's no point in speculating

on that kind of long-term.



I think that won't happen so long as:

1. The regions are governed by a single entity
2. They're fed news & entertainment by a centralised media
3. The majority of people participate in economic life via jobs & buying goods/services mainly from centralized sources (corporations) & movement between job categories remains possible
4. Jobs are accessed through an education system directed from a central administration
5. Class/income divisions don't result in a large hereditary class of persons largely excluded from economic life
6. People continue to be able to move around.


language divergence mirrors the degree of separation: temporal, spacial, social.

[CreekDog]

44. People move around too much

so I doubt it.

[Cresent City Kid]

48. I find this topic interesting

I'm from New Orleans which has an accent and dialect all its own, different from the rest of the south, and even Cajuns, contrary to Hollywood's portrayals. It is a blend that is hard to describe or even spell phonetically. It is closer to Brooklynese than anything else. The way we say "New Yawk" sounds like we're from New York. Our Irish, Italian, German, and other immigrants along with the Cajuns, didn't live in sharply segregated communities, and the speech became unique. The African Americans contributed to the mix, although the non-segregated community aspect doesn't apply.

I did learn to speak "yankee" from TV, but this is far from universal in my, or most regions with sharply different dialects.

[nickinSTL]

4. I can imagine that

I lived in the Rheinland-Pfalz for a number of years, and the dialect they used was difficult to understand, so I can see how even some Germans might have had a hard time.

Fortunately, I speak formal High German, so I can usually be understood. I might sound like a newscaster, but I can deal with that. :evilgrin:

[Vickers]

11. When I lived in Rheinland-Pfalz (Winnweiler, home of Bischoff Bier) I couldn't

understand them at first, but I learned German in the Wiesbaden area...only 90 klicks away.

:crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy:

[tango-tee]

14. It's odd how copious amounts of wine and beer

help in the translation. :toast:

And yes, only 90 klicks make a huge difference in the dialects here.

[nickinSTL]

20. huh. I lived not far from Winnweiler after college

I lived in Breunigweiler - just about due east across 40.

[Vickers]

46. Hey, that village is even smaller than Winnweiler!

:P

I've actually biked through Breunigweiler a few times (I was stationed at Sembach, and used to go all over the place on my bike).

[nickinSTL]

47. Yep, it's pretty tiny

I worked one or two summers at Sembach and then 2 years at the Miesau Army Depot, the other side of Kaiserslautern while living in Breunigweiler.

[tigereye]

5. I always wondered if my German from junior high and high school was affected

by my first teacher, who was from Bayern. (bi-urn)

[Gormy Cuss]

41. I was taught standard French by French-Canadians. My accent was close to that of Bretagne

and while I sounded like someone from Quebec too my usage was not at all similar.
In some way I wish that I had learned the Quebec idiom.

[JI7]

6. i can't understand Brits sometimes

[Brother Buzz]

7. When I visited a gasthaus in Bonn they could not understand my English

I ordered a dry Martini and was served three! I was high, but still speaking English when I left the establishment.

[eShirl]

31. lol

[salguine]

8. Just say, "Ich habe ein fünfundzwanzig-centimeter Penis." That usually breaks the ice.

[tango-tee]

10. Snort!

That would break anything, not just the ice!

[PhillyGurl]

9. Ja wohl, du hast vollkommend Recht!

Ich wohnte in Bayern fuer fast vier Jahre, und dieses Bayerisches Dialekt ist nicht so einfach zu verstehen.

Geh' ma'hoam =Ich gehe nach Hause.

[tango-tee]

13. Und ein Prosit, ein Prosit

der Gemütlichkeit!

Where did you live, PhillyGirl? Ich hoffe, es hat Dir bei uns gefallen? Schweinebraten und Knödel?

[PhillyGurl]

16. Seeshaupt, am Starnberger See

es war SO wunderschoen. Mein Herz ist im kleinen stueck gebrochen, weil ich niemals in Deutschland wohnen koennen. :-( Ich hat so viel Lust fuer Spazierengehen und Fahradfahren ins Natur. Aber jetzt habe ich einen neuen Freund und wir fischen und Kampen zusammen gehen. Alles schlaffen unter die gleichen Sterne, trotz wir Deutsche oder Amerikanner sind.

[tango-tee]

24. Der Starnberger See is so schön!

Genau, wir schlafen alle unter den gleichen Sternen. Das hast du wunderschön gesagt.

Ich wünsche dir und deinem Freund alles Liebe und Gute, PhillyGurl! Enjoy...

t-t
(Anke)

[PhillyGurl]

33. Danke Anke! Und hoffentlich, vielleicht dieses Jahr

Deutschland bringt der Weltmeister Title zu Hause!! Ich habe in Juni 2006 angeschaut, und ja, Italia war sehr BOESE!!! (Entschuldigung, aber meine Deutsch ist nicht perfect, seit ich nach Amerika umgezogen bin.) Ob du English Ueben wollen, schreibt mir off list. PM me. It would be a big help for me to keep up my language skills, I took German for two solid years, 6 hours a day, so I don't want to lose it!!

Und wo wohnst du? In der naehe von Muenchen? Oder?

Danke gleichweis - PhillyGurl

Here is where I lived looking south to the Alps. It doesn't get any better than this....

[tango-tee]

35. Nicht in der Nähe von München, sondern in Nürnberg.

It doesn't matter if your German isn't perfect, it's a difficult language to learn, so please don't apologize. My command of the English language leaves a bit to be desired.

Yes, please send me a PM. How did you like the food here? Weisswurst und Brezen?

And it is so lovely to receive a picture of "home" from across the Atlantic!

Much love to you, PhillyGurl and hope to hear from you soon.

Anke

[PhillyGurl]

58. That picture was of Seeshaupt looking towards Alps

Ja, die Deutsche Sprache is ganz schwer.

[tango-tee]

12. That is really true.

Although all of Germany is about half the size of Texas, our dialects are so different from each other that at times during TV interviews they have to run subtitles.

Let me think of a couple of examples:

Here's the translation for the word "egg".
In High German: Ei (pronouced "aye")
In Franconian dialect: Gaggala

And here's "roll" - as in "breakfast roll":
In High German: Brötchen
In Bavarian dialect: Semmel
In Franconian dialect: Weckla

And on and on it goes. I don't even want to think of the differences between the "Plattdeutsch" up north and the Bavarian in the south. They might as well be speaking different languages. We do try to meet in the middle somewhere, but it's not easy.

[nickinSTL]

17. a comment and a question

if you don't mind.

The comment is - in the area I lived in in the Rheinland-Pfalz, instead of saying 'Morgen (like saying 'Morning in English for those non-German speakers), they would say 'Morge - pronounced approximately like morzhə.

The question - in the area I was in, every word ending in -ig, the ig was pronounced like ich. I was taught that the "correct" pronunciation was more like ik. Is that purely regional, or common across Germany?

[tango-tee]

22. That's strictly regional.

For example, here in Franconia, instead of saying "Morzhe", we say "Morng". A little farther up north it's pronounced "Moin".

Thinking of this, when I lived in Sicily, I noticed that even the dialects on this *island* differed a great deal. One would think there would be a common dialect, but far from it.

Guten Morgen to you, friend! Or, as we grumpy Franconians would grunt out "Morng!"

[seattle_blue]

21. A while back

I went on a tour in Scotland, I did not understand a word during the entire tour. If you are a native English speaker and always wondered what English sounds like when it is spoken but you can't understand it. May I suggest Scotland. I am not trying to imply that it's like that in all parts. But I know I could not understand the tour guide.

[Kali]

25. hell, I can't understand my kids and they only live a couple of rooms away

:rofl:

[gateley]

26. We had a German intern and he met a woman who had been living here for

years and for the heck of it they spoke in High German (they were both exceptionally fluent in English). Later he told me her High German was terrible! I don't quite get it, but that's the first I'd heard of it.

If you take German language in school, what do they teach you?

[Karenina]

37. Native German speakers immersed in English

begin to lose it noticeably after 3 years.

[tango-tee]

38. Students are taught grammatically correct High German.

They will write their essays in High German, and High German is also what is spoken on the news. Teachers do their very best to instill its usage in students here. There is one geographical area where it is actually used in daily life, and that is around Hannover.

The big problem in using our ancient dialects is that not only are words substituted, but the entire structure of a sentence is turned around, grammar is "bastardized" if you will, which makes certain dialects sound like a foreign language.

The way people go about communicating in daily life is really cute at times, because we try to speak to one another in High German, often with screamingly funny results.

I replied to another poster earlier in this thread and used this example:

"Breakfast roll" translates into

High German: Brötchen
Bavarian: Semmel
Franconian: Weckla
Berlin: Schrippe

Anyone who can make sense out of this... Argh.

[gateley]

43. How interesting - thanks! nt

[Karenina]

54. They may be taught it but the kids sure don't use it!

D'englisch is "all the rage" to the extent that I fear degradation of the language. It's something I'm quite ambivalent about...

[tango-tee]

55. So true!

But it isn't just the kids. Marketing and advertising are the true culprits, and often it comes across as so idiotic because it's obvious that it isn't the "natural" way people talk. Add the various dialects into the mixture, and it only highlights the pitiful attempt at wanting to appear cosmopolitan. And failing miserably.

[rug]

32. Hamburgers and Frankfurters do not go together.

[MissHoneychurch]

57. That would be a Hot Dog then

:D

[HooptieWagon]

34. It took me quite a while to understand 'strine....

That would be Australian. I do fairly well discerning between British, Bermudan, and Australian dialects now (usually surprise Bermudans and Australians by identifying their nationality from their speech).

A friend of mine learned spanish in Cuba. Now, when he visits South America he's scorned for "speaking like a Cuban". Cuban spanish rates only (barely) higher than Puerto Rican spanish... Colombians speak the best.

[MyNameGoesHere]

36. I was of the opinion they CHOSE not to understand

another dialect. I never fully believed they were that dense that they could not understand each other. I think it was some of that regional hubris shit going on.

[hobbit709]

39. And none of them could understand a person from Vienna.

[DFW]

40. Don't forget, "Germany" wasn't even a unified country until 1871

Hamburgers spoke "Pladdütsch," Frankfurters spoke "Hessisch," Dresdners spoke Sächsicsch, Bavarians spoke "Bayrisch,"
and so on. Many people still do speak pure versions of their local dialects, especially in rural areas. My wife's
father's native language was Cloppenburger Platt, in other words the "Pladdütsch" of the flat farming area around
the town of Cloppenburg.

The version spoken in Hannover gradually became the accepted lingua franca for all of Germany, but the local dialects
still survive, and are sometimes even used as a weapon of insult to outsiders. I was once in a hospital in Erlangen,
near Nürnberg. When they heard my northern German accent, from years of being married to a northern German and having
a base of operations near Düsseldorf, they made it a point to speak to me in their native "Fränkisch," as northern
Germans were considered to be offensive boors who came down there to rule over the locals. There was a big Siemens
operation there, and Siemens is a Hamburg-headquartered company. The managers from Hamburg were always flying down
for a day or two and ordering the locals around as if they were peasants. Therefore, anyone with a northern accent was
a hated "preiss" or "Prussian." I got around this by switching to a Swiss dialect. Once they heard that, they assumed
I was Swiss, and not a northern German, and they suddenly all remembered how to speak "Hochdeutsch," or standard "high"
German, so I could understand them. I understood why, but it all seemed kid of silly to me. But then, their unification
came later than the end of Civil War, and had over a millenium of linguistic history behind it as well. It's easy to
forget that as an American, whose "local" history rarely goes back over 300 years if you are of European or African
ancestry.

[Arugula Latte]

60. Really?

I had no idea there had been that many different tongues in Germany.

That is fascinating.

[DFW]

61. It used to be quite a diverse place

20th century media standardized things a lot, but there are still plenty of places where the old languages are still
spoken first, standard German second, although these are diminishing. The regional accents remain very much pronounced,
though, and are as easily recognized by Germans as Baaston, Noo Yawk, or a Texas drawl is in the States.

[Fuzz]

45. When I was a child, I understood my Grandparents from the south of Germany

more than my grandmother from the north. They spoke schwabisch (sp), and I heard that more often I guess.

I moved from CT to VA when I was 9. We stopped on the Bay Bridge to look and there was another family there from the deep south. I couldn't understand them either and I was scared and shocked and afraid everyone was going to sound like that. lmao

[JackRiddler]

50. The Swiss are the worst. Koelsch is hard but really fun.

[Heidi]

52. Which Swiss?

:shrug:

[JackRiddler]

53. The Schwyzerdeutsch, I mean. When they speak High German, it's beautiful.

[Iggo]

51. Hamburgers and Frankfurters.

Okay, now I'm Hungary.

[PhillyGurl]

59. Damn, I am starving again!!!

Time for a hot dog. :-)

[MissHoneychurch]

56. It is true

and more true the farther away the people live. Frankfurt dialect is understandable compared to the dialect in the high north or in the low south.

I remember when I movedfrom Leipzig to the Lake Constance in South Germany I didn't understand anything when the people talked their dialect. Over the time I picked up some words but still would have troubles.