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> There are standardised variants of grammar and orthography, not necessarily of pronunciation. It usually directly translates to pronunciation as that's a rat

> 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.
- muffinman26 6y ago
  Saarbrücken, the barely moderate-size city I studied at in Germany, has three distinct dialects. It lies right on the French border. At least one dialect has heavy French influence and one does not. Most of the local students I talked to spoke German that was very close to Hochdeutsch plus some linguistic peculiarities and slang terms. As far as I could tell this was the dialect they used at home, when drunk, talking with childhood friends, etc., and I could understand it easily. Every once in a while, though, I would meet someone (usually of a slightly older generation) whose dialect I found completely unintelligible. I'm not sure how easily the average local German could understand the different dialects. Most of the local people I talked to regularly were computational linguist students, German teachers, or worked in the international student office, so they had a particular interest in learning languages.

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.

muffinman26 6y ago
Saarbrücken, the barely moderate-size city I studied at in Germany, has three distinct dialects. It lies right on the French border. At least one dialect has heavy French influence and one does not. Most of the local students I talked to spoke German that was very close to Hochdeutsch plus some linguistic peculiarities and slang terms. As far as I could tell this was the dialect they used at home, when drunk, talking with childhood friends, etc., and I could understand it easily. Every once in a while, though, I would meet someone (usually of a slightly older generation) whose dialect I found completely unintelligible. I'm not sure how easily the average local German could understand the different dialects. Most of the local people I talked to regularly were computational linguist students, German teachers, or worked in the international student office, so they had a particular interest in learning languages.