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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Betjeman Groupie Germany Joined 5982 days ago 85 posts - 204 votes  Speaks: German* | Message 9 of 26 05 February 2013 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, I should think the situation is rather well-balanced these days. Nearly everyone in Germany is capable of communicating in High German, and yet there is a large variety of dialects and accents throughout the country. As a result, most people have at least some kind of accent that connects them with their origin without preventing them from functioning in a nation-wide context. The exception to the rule are indeed very remote and rural areas. If you are interested in this kind of thing, there are several dialectal translations of the famous French comic series "Astérix". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4546 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 10 of 26 05 February 2013 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with what was said by Betjeman on the dialect situation. In Germany, you should
just learn Hochdeutsch, unless you plan to live among platt-speaking farmers or spend 20 years encased in a Bavarian village or something. Boarisch is indeed a wholly different kettle of fish. I can deal with High German just fine, and even high German with a slight accent, but Boarisch is a nightmare. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4461 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 11 of 26 05 February 2013 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
Nothing wrong with learning a dialect. You could just as easily say that in Holland you should just learn English in order to be understood by everyone plus many people in the surrounding countries. Why bother with Dutch unless you exclusively want to mix with Dutch cheese makers? Edited by beano on 05 February 2013 at 6:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4546 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 12 of 26 05 February 2013 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | ||
It's correct you would have to learn Platt in such a circumstance, but most people will speak High German with a local accent, generally sticking to more standard rules, especially if they're dealing with someone from "outside the village". It's the same principle in the Netherlands where everyone speaks Dutch with an accent, but people don't speak dialect unless they're old farmers in rural areas. I am Dutch, and even to me my family would not speak in flat Brabantian dialect except my grandparents (who spoke nowt else) and they would also weaken it as far as possible to keep it intelligible for an outsider. And no, the correct comparison is with Dutch as a lingua franca vs a Brabantian or a Low Saxon dialect, as Dutch is the official language everyone speaks (English has no official status and you will find plenty of people unable to speak good English), whereas everyone will learn Dutch (even the mentally disabled learn Dutch). If you do want to learn it, be my guest, but there are no resources for these dialects and they are almost dead as such. These dialects are spoken, not written. Edited by tarvos on 05 February 2013 at 7:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elijah Diglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 4568 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: French, Swedish | Message 13 of 26 05 February 2013 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Beano, can I ask you about your native English dialect? How much does it differ (if does) from RP and what collisions occur when you need (if need) to switch between formal and native registers? You know, one thing that's always getting me is how foreigners correlate their local idioms with the national koine - being native speaker of Russian, I suppose, the sole extremely homogenous language in the world with more than 100,000 speakers, I'm deprived of such kind of linguistical experience.
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| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4461 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 14 of 26 05 February 2013 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||
My native dialect would be a version of Scottish English derived from Lowland Scots. When dealing with people from further afield I would change to a standard English register, although it's hard to stop Scots vocabulary creeping into your speech. But generally speaking, Scottish people are readily understood when we make the effort to speak with clarity, as we use pure vowel sounds (perhaps this is why Scots find German relatively easy to pronounce). Regional accents are widely heard on British TV nowadays. Everyone knows what the Scottish comedian Billy Connelly sounds like, for example. To me, the words door and poor have totally different sounds, yet I've heard others say they pronounce them the same. I also roll my r, which is absent in RP, I think. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Betjeman Groupie Germany Joined 5982 days ago 85 posts - 204 votes Speaks: German* | Message 15 of 26 05 February 2013 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is certainly nothing wrong with learning a dialect. But some people seem to assume that dialects are
a more authentic way of speaking than a "standardised" national language. The fact is that dialects have been subject of standardisation, too. Otherwise it would be impossible to speak of dialects such as Swabian or Bavarian which are understood in large areas of Germany (to wit Swabia and Bavaria). Two hundred years ago, when an average person would hardly ever leave their place of birth, it was common that every single village had its own dialect which was difficult to comprehend even a few kilometres farther. Is this really the kind of diversity we want to have back? In my opinion, there is a lot of misguided romanticism involved when people assume that dialects need preservation or special care. They are developing just like every other kind of language, and they will survive as long as there is a need for them. Besides, I find it hard to believe that people who are interested in foreign languages (and thus presumably in communicating with people from other countries) are actually advocating the parochialism of days gone by. There are other reasons why speaking a national language rather than a dialect is highly incomparable to speaking English indiscriminately because "everyone understands it anyway". To start with, Swabian and Bavarian have much more in common with high German than English with languages even as closely related as German or Dutch. Moreover, Germans who speak a dialect these days are usually bilingual in that they grew up with their dialect as well as their national language from childhood on, whereas English is usually learnt after the first formative years and thus not a language as close to their hearts and minds as the language(s) they grew up with. Sometimes, things change for the better. Being able to speak a dialect (at home), a national language (within one's country), English (as a global lingua franca) and perhaps one or two other languages is definitely an improvement over the highly limited use of a remote dialect in a remote village in an undiscovered valley of the Alps. Edited by Betjeman on 06 February 2013 at 7:48am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6742 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 16 of 26 06 February 2013 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||
Well, it's part of our linguistic diversity. You could say the same about all those dying languages in the remote places all over the world - they are not really needed, yet when they die, some part of human culture is gone. Back to the need to learn German dialects: personally, I think it depends mostly on the place and the length of a stay in German-speaking countries. As a tourist, one can perfectly get by with Standard German pretty much anywhere. In the north of Germany and generally in most German big cities you don't need the knowledge of local dialects even if you decide to stay longer, and there is no reason to learn them other than strong linguistic/cultural interests. If you go south, especially to the above-mentioned Bavaria, you may need at least passive knowledge of the dialect to really integrate with people, especially those less educated, living in the rural area and the elderly. If you decide to live for a longer period of time in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, you'll need to learn the dialect (which is practically a separate language). You'd probably survive with Standard German only but you'd be very much of an outsider. I don't have a lot of experience with Austria but I would guess it's somewhere between Bavaria and Switzerland, probably closer to the former. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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