5 ms·

Tho German has standardized variants for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, regulated by the international body of of the Council for German Orthography. Imho i

Tho German has standardized variants for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, regulated by the international body of of the Council for German Orthography. Imho it's also kind of reductive to make "accentism" out as something purely discriminatory, when the matter of fact is that particularly a lot of regional accents are often unintelligible for people who are not familiar with them, even when they are native speakers of the language without ascent. In Germany one can grow up and live in the middle of a state for their whole lives, and still heavily struggle with understanding the local accent of a smaller nearby town. And while that is certainly an enrichment on the cultural diversity side to have that many, and so different, accents, it also makes communication more difficult, more prone to fail, thus ultimately more likely for misunderstandings to happen.

Tainnor 6y ago
There are standardised variants of grammar and orthography, not necessarily of pronunciation. There is a more loose standard (never written down anywhere explicitly I believe, not surprisingly, since who's gonna read a phonetic treatise?) in Germany in terms of pronunciation, which is certainly what most people in the media, try to speak, but you won't have any such luck in Switzerland, neither with actual Swiss German, nor with the way Swiss people pronounce Standard German (it's interesting: I can usually roughly tell where a Swiss person is from when they speak German). Not understanding, or having more trouble with, certain accents doesn't make you an "accentist", but thinking that this is a fault on the other person's side is. > In Germany one can grow up and live in the middle of a state for their whole lives, and still heavily struggle with understanding the local accent of a smaller nearby town. Does this really still happen nowadays? > And while that is certainly an enrichment on the cultural diversity side to have that many, and so different, accents, it also makes communication more difficult, more prone to fail, thus ultimately more likely for misunderstandings to happen. Sure, but I guess that's the price you pay for diversity, one I'm personally glad to pay.
- mpol 6y ago
  "Does this really still happen nowadays?" Not a direct answer to your question, but I live in the Netherlands which is a lot smaller than Germany, about 300x200 km. Every village has their own accent/dialect and every region often has their own words or even sub-language. I live 50km from Fryslan, but I cannot make any sense of Frysian language. The same for Limburg or Flanders when people have a deep accent. Sometimes people with such a strong accent get on tv, and they provide subtitles, otherwise it is just incomprehensible to most Dutch people. It is often a culture of relating to someone, like "We are from the same background". At my chess club there are 3 persons that know Frysian, when they decide to talk Frysian, it is better to just walk away :)
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    Frisian isn't too relevant to a discussion of Dutch accents, because Frisian is universally considered to be a different language than Dutch. After all, Frisian and Dutch split off from their common ancestor already in the first millennium AD.
    - ninju 6y ago
      And I guess even the spelling of the language name is up to debate ?
      - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
        The English Wikipedia article on Frisian doesn't even list "Frysian" as an alternative spelling, so this is an error on the part of the OP.
        mumblemumble 6y ago
        It may not list it as an alternative English spelling, but the page for the main dialect of Frisian does indicate that the language's own name for itself is spelled with a Y. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language
- freeflight 6y ago
  > There are standardised variants of grammar and orthography, not necessarily of pronunciation. It usually directly translates to pronunciation as that's a rather big part of spoken Hochdeutsch. > Does this really still happen nowadays? Yes, a lot. Thick Bavarian accents are often considered intelligible in the rest of Germany. Even inside Bavaria dialects can range from "easily understandable" like a lot of Franconian, to something so thick that even other Bavarian's might struggle with understanding, like some regional Upper Palatine dialects. Often even small towns will have their very own accents. > Sure, but I guess that's the price you pay for diversity, one I'm personally glad to pay. I guess I'm just too utilitarian for that, my ideal version of humanity would speak one common language to improve cooperation and understanding among each other. Dialects are cool and interesting, but there are already so many languages to learn, expecting people to learn a whole bunch of dialects for each of those, in addition to the language itself, is quite an impossible task for the vast majority of people who don't learn languages for a living.
  - dashundchen 6y ago
    > Yes, a lot. Thick Bavarian accents are often considered intelligible in the rest of Germany. Even inside Bavaria dialects can range from "easily understandable" like a lot of Franconian, to something so thick that even other Bavarian's might struggle with understanding, like some regional Upper Palatine dialects. Somewhat related story about Swiss German, although it is more of a dialect than accent. I self-studied German for two years - Duolingo, consuming a lot of German media, chatting via video with different speakers online. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on basic conversational skills. When I finally went to Germany for the first time, I had a connecting flight in Zurich on Swiss Air. After boarding the flight I realized I could hardly understand anyone. Most of the staff and passengers were speaking Swiss German. I panicked a good part of the flight about my misplaced confidence in my fluency. Luckily on the trip through Germany I had no problem with Hochdeutsch. However there definitely were very noticeable differences in accent and word usage as I moved from Schleswig-Holstein in the north to Bayern in the south via the east.
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    > It usually directly translates to pronunciation as that's a rather big part of spoken Hochdeutsch. Not really, since there are lots of small pronunciation differences (e.g. the pronunciation of "ä", the quality of "i" in words like "Kirche", etc.) that are not distinguished in writing. At the same time, some "Bühnenhochdeutsch" pronunciations are not even captured by orthography, e.g. syllable-final -ig being pronounced as -ich or the voicing of the s sound before vowels at the syllable onset. In fact, especially with phenomena such as reduction of "-er" etc. in standard German, Swiss people will usually claim that they speak "German as it is written" even though that is wildly different from how most Germans speak. Also, I mean, modern German and its orthography was modeled in large parts after Saxon, but nobody would think nowadays that Saxon constitutes "standard German" in terms of pronunciation. > Yes, a lot. Thick Bavarian accents are often considered intelligible in the rest of Germany. Even inside Bavaria dialects can range from "easily understandable" like a lot of Franconian, to something so thick that even other Bavarian's might struggle with understanding, like some regional Upper Palatine dialects. > Often even small towns will have their very own accents. But that wasn't your claim. You claimed that dialects are unintelligible from town to town which is usually very rare, since dialects tend to form a continuum. > I guess I'm just too utilitarian for that, my ideal version of humanity would speak one common language to improve cooperation and understanding among each other. That's not a linguistic question anymore, but one of personal values. However, it is worth noting that cases of language death often are accompanied by culture death as well, and deep feelings of shame and guilt within the respective communities.

Tainnor 6y ago

There are standardised variants of grammar and orthography, not necessarily of pronunciation. There is a more loose standard (never written down anywhere explicitly I believe, not surprisingly, since who's gonna read a phonetic treatise?) in Germany in terms of pronunciation, which is certainly what most people in the media, try to speak, but you won't have any such luck in Switzerland, neither with actual Swiss German, nor with the way Swiss people pronounce Standard German (it's interesting: I can usually roughly tell where a Swiss person is from when they speak German). Not understanding, or having more trouble with, certain accents doesn't make you an "accentist", but thinking that this is a fault on the other person's side is. > In Germany one can grow up and live in the middle of a state for their whole lives, and still heavily struggle with understanding the local accent of a smaller nearby town. Does this really still happen nowadays? > And while that is certainly an enrichment on the cultural diversity side to have that many, and so different, accents, it also makes communication more difficult, more prone to fail, thus ultimately more likely for misunderstandings to happen. Sure, but I guess that's the price you pay for diversity, one I'm personally glad to pay.

mpol 6y ago
"Does this really still happen nowadays?" Not a direct answer to your question, but I live in the Netherlands which is a lot smaller than Germany, about 300x200 km. Every village has their own accent/dialect and every region often has their own words or even sub-language. I live 50km from Fryslan, but I cannot make any sense of Frysian language. The same for Limburg or Flanders when people have a deep accent. Sometimes people with such a strong accent get on tv, and they provide subtitles, otherwise it is just incomprehensible to most Dutch people. It is often a culture of relating to someone, like "We are from the same background". At my chess club there are 3 persons that know Frysian, when they decide to talk Frysian, it is better to just walk away :)
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Frisian isn't too relevant to a discussion of Dutch accents, because Frisian is universally considered to be a different language than Dutch. After all, Frisian and Dutch split off from their common ancestor already in the first millennium AD.
  - ninju 6y ago
    And I guess even the spelling of the language name is up to debate ?
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      The English Wikipedia article on Frisian doesn't even list "Frysian" as an alternative spelling, so this is an error on the part of the OP.
      - mumblemumble 6y ago
        It may not list it as an alternative English spelling, but the page for the main dialect of Frisian does indicate that the language's own name for itself is spelled with a Y. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language
freeflight 6y ago
> There are standardised variants of grammar and orthography, not necessarily of pronunciation. It usually directly translates to pronunciation as that's a rather big part of spoken Hochdeutsch. > Does this really still happen nowadays? Yes, a lot. Thick Bavarian accents are often considered intelligible in the rest of Germany. Even inside Bavaria dialects can range from "easily understandable" like a lot of Franconian, to something so thick that even other Bavarian's might struggle with understanding, like some regional Upper Palatine dialects. Often even small towns will have their very own accents. > Sure, but I guess that's the price you pay for diversity, one I'm personally glad to pay. I guess I'm just too utilitarian for that, my ideal version of humanity would speak one common language to improve cooperation and understanding among each other. Dialects are cool and interesting, but there are already so many languages to learn, expecting people to learn a whole bunch of dialects for each of those, in addition to the language itself, is quite an impossible task for the vast majority of people who don't learn languages for a living.
- dashundchen 6y ago
  > Yes, a lot. Thick Bavarian accents are often considered intelligible in the rest of Germany. Even inside Bavaria dialects can range from "easily understandable" like a lot of Franconian, to something so thick that even other Bavarian's might struggle with understanding, like some regional Upper Palatine dialects. Somewhat related story about Swiss German, although it is more of a dialect than accent. I self-studied German for two years - Duolingo, consuming a lot of German media, chatting via video with different speakers online. I thought I had a pretty good grasp on basic conversational skills. When I finally went to Germany for the first time, I had a connecting flight in Zurich on Swiss Air. After boarding the flight I realized I could hardly understand anyone. Most of the staff and passengers were speaking Swiss German. I panicked a good part of the flight about my misplaced confidence in my fluency. Luckily on the trip through Germany I had no problem with Hochdeutsch. However there definitely were very noticeable differences in accent and word usage as I moved from Schleswig-Holstein in the north to Bayern in the south via the east.
- Tainnor 6y ago
  > It usually directly translates to pronunciation as that's a rather big part of spoken Hochdeutsch. Not really, since there are lots of small pronunciation differences (e.g. the pronunciation of "ä", the quality of "i" in words like "Kirche", etc.) that are not distinguished in writing. At the same time, some "Bühnenhochdeutsch" pronunciations are not even captured by orthography, e.g. syllable-final -ig being pronounced as -ich or the voicing of the s sound before vowels at the syllable onset. In fact, especially with phenomena such as reduction of "-er" etc. in standard German, Swiss people will usually claim that they speak "German as it is written" even though that is wildly different from how most Germans speak. Also, I mean, modern German and its orthography was modeled in large parts after Saxon, but nobody would think nowadays that Saxon constitutes "standard German" in terms of pronunciation. > Yes, a lot. Thick Bavarian accents are often considered intelligible in the rest of Germany. Even inside Bavaria dialects can range from "easily understandable" like a lot of Franconian, to something so thick that even other Bavarian's might struggle with understanding, like some regional Upper Palatine dialects. > Often even small towns will have their very own accents. But that wasn't your claim. You claimed that dialects are unintelligible from town to town which is usually very rare, since dialects tend to form a continuum. > I guess I'm just too utilitarian for that, my ideal version of humanity would speak one common language to improve cooperation and understanding among each other. That's not a linguistic question anymore, but one of personal values. However, it is worth noting that cases of language death often are accompanied by culture death as well, and deep feelings of shame and guilt within the respective communities.