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Somewhat frustrated with Austrian dialect | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5771 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 1 of 13 25 November 2011 at 10:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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Okay, so, I don't like moaning and like to think I do it pretty rarely, and have
*never* moaned about German before, but here goes - I've spent the last two weeks in Lower Austria, in Waidhofen an der Ybbs. Granted, Waidhofen (here with the stress on that ó, which sounds weird to my ears), is only just in Lower Austria, but still. My girlfriend is acting as an English teaching assistant in two of the Gymnasien here. Now usually when I travel to somewhere German-speaking (until two weeks ago I'd only ever been to Germany, though), I will understand the vast majority or everything people say either first time or after asking them to repeat once or in the worst case scenario, twice. That goes especially when people are speaking directly to me, but often when sitting in cafés and bars and just happen to hear bits and pieces of others' conversations. But here, unless I am being spoken to directly, I understand very little or worse, *absolutely* nothing, and never complete sentences. At first I thought this was just because the Austrian accent is presumably different and because a few terms were different. For example, my girlfriend asked me to go to the shop and get some "Faschiertes", minced meat, and I was confused as the only word I knew for that was "Hackfleisch". Other words that have thrown me are "Schlagobers" - Schlagsahne or whipped cream, Marillen, or Aprikosen or apricots, and Erdäpfel which French told me were potatoes. But it doesn't seem to be just these terms being different that throws me, as I can *hear* those words every single time, I just occasionally now forget what they mean. I listen to people on the street and hear little but a blur of sounds, and that hasn't happened to me in German for years; I certainly can't clearly remember the last time I understood nothing someone said. Now the only reason I can think of for my embarrassing lack of understanding is that people speak dialect a lot more frequently here - Does anyone have any opinions on this? It would make sense, I think, as when I speak directly to people they understand me perfectly well and vice-versa, so they must switch to Hochdeutsch, but perhaps it's just me trying to make excuses for myself? Are there any other explanations, other than my German just isn't up to scratch? Thanks for any insight and I apologise profusely for any of the above that you considered moaning :] Jack Edited by Fasulye on 26 November 2011 at 11:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5414 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 2 of 13 25 November 2011 at 11:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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Jack, Austrian do speak a dialect, like the Swiss. If you go to Germany, you will notice the difference and probably understand way more. Unless you go to Bavaria, where they speak also a dialect. As a native German speaker I had a lot of problems in the past to understand the Austrian dialect. I started to understand it when I learned a bit Swiss-German. For me, Hochdeutsch and dialects are completely different languages. You shouldn't be too bothered to not understand Austrian :)
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| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5771 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 3 of 13 25 November 2011 at 11:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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This makes me feel a lot better, thanks very much. It's a pain that I don't understand
"street-talk" here, as for me understanding others when they're not speaking directly to me is half the fun of learning a language. It's a shame I don't understand it because I really like it here. I am beginning to hear a little bit more, but no where near enough to understand complete sentences and I can't consciously remember any of the very few of the new, unusual words that I am beginning to hear. Even the name of the river here sounds like an odd word to me. It's funny - I've listened to Swiss German before on the Internet and I can honestly say I understand much more of that, although not by any means all, than I understand the dialect here. Keep opinions and experiences coming :] Danke :] 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5325 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 4 of 13 25 November 2011 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wouldn't know what "Faschiertes" is either. Wikipedia has a long list of of Austrian German words and expressions and I only recognized a handful of them. Like Kisfroccs said, it's almost like a completely different language.
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| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5414 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 5 of 13 25 November 2011 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Everytime I went to Hungary, and had to made a stop in Vienna, I had a) problems to understand what they talked about, b) didn't understand some words. Of the words you quoted earlier, I only could have said that "Erdapfel", or "Grüss Gott" were. Erdapfel - because it is a word my grandparents also use, and Gruss Gott because I used it when I was little.
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| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5771 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 6 of 13 25 November 2011 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
I had a look down some of that list and stopped because I wasn't getting many at all! It does certainly seem to be a completely different language.
Ah, this is making me feel so much better. They say "Gruess Gott" here all over the place - it definitely seems to be the most common greeting and after a week of being here I was genuinely surprised when we went to the "Kassa" and went to pay for something or other, and the woman said "hallo", which before I came here was relatively normal - I'm most used to "servus" when I go to Munich, though. I am already beginning to regret not varying the places I visited when I was younger much much earlier. I suppose if I'd varied the places I went to more and earlier, I'd have encountered and got over this problem much easier and earlier :] Danke :] Jack Edited by LanguageSponge on 25 November 2011 at 2:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5852 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 13 26 November 2011 at 11:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Jack,
You story here is a wellknown experience for me. When my family moved to Bavaria I had a lot of difficulties to understand my classmates speaking on the schoolyard because all of them were speaking Bavarian and I was educated by my parents in High German. Some German dialects (and this will be the same in Austria) differ significatly from your wellknown and wellstudied High German, but I should give you some examples of Bavarian: Guten Tag = Grüß Gott or Grüßdi (informal) Tschüß = Pfiateich! or Pfietdi! ein Brötchen = eine Semmel On the TV channel "Bayrisches Fernsehen" (= BR) there are films and other TV - programs broadcasted in Bavarian and love to watch them because this "language" reminds me of three years of my childhood which I spent in Bavaria. As an experience I can say that it takes a lot of time (at least several months!) to adapt to such a dialect - this is the same for native speakers of German. You can't expect to become familiar with it in only 3-4 weeks. So you should be very patient with the knowledge that also naitve speakers of German would have the same problem in your situation. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 26 November 2011 at 11:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6277 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 8 of 13 27 November 2011 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was in Austria recently. They certainly use more dialect than most BRD citizens, in my experience, but standard Austrian German is not a different language and the somewhat different vocabulary can be overcome, with sufficient exposure.
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