When I went to live in Germany as an exchange student for 2 years, I found my self in Swabia. I had been learning Hochdeutsch for 3 years, and I had no idea the

When I went to live in Germany as an exchange student for 2 years, I found my self in Swabia. I had been learning Hochdeutsch for 3 years, and I had no idea there even was a dialect in that region, so I found myself struggling to figure out what people were saying. I hadn't had that problem when I was traveling in other regions. Some of the people there who spoke a very strong dialect were completely incomprehensible to me. After 2 years and doing an internship in a workplace where most of the people were Swabian, I could understand it quite well and could even speak a little. It was quite amazing how continual exposure to the dialect made it go from nonsense to normal. I was amused when I spoke with Germans who seemed apparently unable to speak standard German despite hearing it everyday from TV, radio, and non-Swabian speakers: they could only seem to speak in their Swabian dialect. What was even more amusing is when they spoke English and their Swabian accent came through into English as well.