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Precisely! Also, most southern Germans will understand your Austrian tongue very well. Berlin is full of “immigrants” from southern Germany, but they will go gr

Precisely! Also, most southern Germans will understand your Austrian tongue very well. Berlin is full of “immigrants” from southern Germany, but they will go great lengths to hide it, for fear of being made fun of. The moral barrier that keeps most Germans from making fun of immigrants from other countries is void if they detect a “funny” German accent.

DocTomoe 6y ago
Not only "fear of being made fun of", also "not becoming a target for terrorist acts". In some Berlin districts, having the "wrong" license plate is making it likely to get your car torched.
- periheli0n 6y ago
  These are maybe five blocks in a distinct Kreuzberg neighbourhood which has gone from low rent to being among the most expensive parts of Berlin, within a decade. The inhabitants often have no choice but to move far away in Berlin, giving up their home. Many of them are very angry and have nothing to lose.
atoav 6y ago
For me it is actually not fear of being made fun of, it is just that I don't like to repeat myself because I am not understood. Talking in a way where people understand what you are saying has tangible benefits. My home dialect is so far removed from "propper written German" that to me it just feels like talking a different language, which arguably makes things easier, because it doesn't feel like I am adjusting my Austrian German to make it fit, it feels like I am talking in a different language altogether.
- periheli0n 6y ago
  I agree... I always find it a little sad that Germany fails to embrace the diversity of its local dialects. When I grew up in the south of Germany I could tell which village someone was from after listening to a couple of sentences they spoke. But when moving away one must quench that local dialect and try to speak "hochdeutsch" ("high-german")—Otherwise one can't even buy bread in a bakery without being called out as the "swabian" (which seems to be the catch-all for all southern dialects in Northern Germany). Compare that to Switzerland, where people proudly speak their "Mundart" wherever they go (and are wound up by high-German speaking immigrants). Germany has such a wonderful regional diversity, but at the same time that inherent hostility against it... and Germans are, for some reason, super-afraid to discuss it.

DocTomoe 6y ago

Not only "fear of being made fun of", also "not becoming a target for terrorist acts". In some Berlin districts, having the "wrong" license plate is making it likely to get your car torched.

periheli0n 6y ago
These are maybe five blocks in a distinct Kreuzberg neighbourhood which has gone from low rent to being among the most expensive parts of Berlin, within a decade. The inhabitants often have no choice but to move far away in Berlin, giving up their home. Many of them are very angry and have nothing to lose.

atoav 6y ago

For me it is actually not fear of being made fun of, it is just that I don't like to repeat myself because I am not understood. Talking in a way where people understand what you are saying has tangible benefits. My home dialect is so far removed from "propper written German" that to me it just feels like talking a different language, which arguably makes things easier, because it doesn't feel like I am adjusting my Austrian German to make it fit, it feels like I am talking in a different language altogether.

periheli0n 6y ago
I agree... I always find it a little sad that Germany fails to embrace the diversity of its local dialects. When I grew up in the south of Germany I could tell which village someone was from after listening to a couple of sentences they spoke. But when moving away one must quench that local dialect and try to speak "hochdeutsch" ("high-german")—Otherwise one can't even buy bread in a bakery without being called out as the "swabian" (which seems to be the catch-all for all southern dialects in Northern Germany). Compare that to Switzerland, where people proudly speak their "Mundart" wherever they go (and are wound up by high-German speaking immigrants). Germany has such a wonderful regional diversity, but at the same time that inherent hostility against it... and Germans are, for some reason, super-afraid to discuss it.