5 ms·

Kinda funny that Bavarian is more distant from 'High German' than Yiddish :D (not exactly wrong though, Yiddish is easier to understand for any non-Bavarian tha

Kinda funny that Bavarian is more distant from 'High German' than Yiddish :D (not exactly wrong though, Yiddish is easier to understand for any non-Bavarian than hardcore Bavarian). There's at least a dozen local German dialects missing which are just as 'weird' as Bavarian though (PS: ok, all the main dialects spoken in the northern parts of Germany seem to be there, just in their own 'heritage node'), I guess Bavarian earned its own spot because it has the most speakers.

nuxi 2mo ago
This one's also interesting - a non-local (geographically disconnected) Bavarian dialect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottscheerish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottscheerish
- SockThief 2mo ago
  It's quite funny for me, because (from the article) in Slovene the dialect is refered to as "kočevarščina". I don't know Slovene, but I speak one of the Slavic languages and it sounds to me as "cat's growl". Not very nice maybe, but we're talking about meanings long lost in time. We call Germans: "Niemcy" and it comes from the word "niemy", which now means "mute", but used to mean "foreigner" in proto-slavic. We don't think of mutes when meeting Germans tho. We never did. Of course no ill will intended here. Just a bit of history perhaps.
  - nuxi 2mo ago
    "Kočevsko" is the Slovene word for the Gottschee region, most likely just a slovenified version of the original German name. "Kočevarji" then refers to the people from this region and "kočevarščina" to their language. Also note that the emphasis in the above terms is on the letter e, not on the o - "kočévsko".
ahartmetz 2mo ago
Yiddish is very similar to Palatinate / Hesse dialect simply because many Jews used to live in that region. I grew up in Palatinate - the only strange things about Yiddish for me are the spellings and the occasional words of Hebrew or other non-German origin. Some Hebrew words are actually part of the Palatinate dialect through the Jewish connection, such as Zores (fight / argument / discord / trouble) or machulle (bankrupt).
Lumich 2mo ago
« earned its own spot » Linguistically, this chart doesn't have much value. Not sure what criteria were used for inclusion of this or that item, perhaps just presence in some ISO standard. “German” per se doesn't mean much, so-called “high-German” („hochdeutsch“, meaning „oberdeutsch“ in opposition to „niederdeutsch“), the language that you and I speak, is an artificial synthesis and administrative compromise on written variations that is not organically rooted in dialectical evolution and historically has been imposed by schooling (which has led to the eradication of the Northern dialects, „platt“, which are derived from old Saxon and thus are related to English), so it is questionable what its meaning should be in this chart. Yiddish is a colonial sociolect and somewhat marginal to the evolution, so again, not clear why it was included. IIRC, Koestler wrote in “The Thirteenth Tribe” (where he rejects the mainstream hypothesis of the origin and nature of Eastern Jewry) that Yiddish is based on the South-Eastern variants, not on the South-Western variants. Looking at the Latin languages, similar inadequacies can be seen. Very superficial and misleading, all in all. Maybe this chart is meant more to showcase CSS and web graphics than linguistics.
- tacker2000 2mo ago
  Yes, why include Bavarian explicitly? You could have included Tyrolean, Viennese, or whatever which are all local dialects on par with "Bavarian". These all belong to the Upper German dialects, as seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects Looks like this is just some Vibecoded app, with no real science behind it.
  - nuxi 2mo ago
    Aren't most Austrian dialects considered as sub-dialects of Bavarian? Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_language#Geographical_distribution_and_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_language#Geographical...
- ithkuil 2mo ago
  Does it mean the Lombard dialect of northern Italy is colonial sociolect too?

nuxi 2mo ago

This one's also interesting - a non-local (geographically disconnected) Bavarian dialect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottscheerish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottscheerish

SockThief 2mo ago
It's quite funny for me, because (from the article) in Slovene the dialect is refered to as "kočevarščina". I don't know Slovene, but I speak one of the Slavic languages and it sounds to me as "cat's growl". Not very nice maybe, but we're talking about meanings long lost in time. We call Germans: "Niemcy" and it comes from the word "niemy", which now means "mute", but used to mean "foreigner" in proto-slavic. We don't think of mutes when meeting Germans tho. We never did. Of course no ill will intended here. Just a bit of history perhaps.
- nuxi 2mo ago
  "Kočevsko" is the Slovene word for the Gottschee region, most likely just a slovenified version of the original German name. "Kočevarji" then refers to the people from this region and "kočevarščina" to their language. Also note that the emphasis in the above terms is on the letter e, not on the o - "kočévsko".

ahartmetz 2mo ago

Yiddish is very similar to Palatinate / Hesse dialect simply because many Jews used to live in that region. I grew up in Palatinate - the only strange things about Yiddish for me are the spellings and the occasional words of Hebrew or other non-German origin. Some Hebrew words are actually part of the Palatinate dialect through the Jewish connection, such as Zores (fight / argument / discord / trouble) or machulle (bankrupt).

Lumich 2mo ago

« earned its own spot » Linguistically, this chart doesn't have much value. Not sure what criteria were used for inclusion of this or that item, perhaps just presence in some ISO standard. “German” per se doesn't mean much, so-called “high-German” („hochdeutsch“, meaning „oberdeutsch“ in opposition to „niederdeutsch“), the language that you and I speak, is an artificial synthesis and administrative compromise on written variations that is not organically rooted in dialectical evolution and historically has been imposed by schooling (which has led to the eradication of the Northern dialects, „platt“, which are derived from old Saxon and thus are related to English), so it is questionable what its meaning should be in this chart. Yiddish is a colonial sociolect and somewhat marginal to the evolution, so again, not clear why it was included. IIRC, Koestler wrote in “The Thirteenth Tribe” (where he rejects the mainstream hypothesis of the origin and nature of Eastern Jewry) that Yiddish is based on the South-Eastern variants, not on the South-Western variants. Looking at the Latin languages, similar inadequacies can be seen. Very superficial and misleading, all in all. Maybe this chart is meant more to showcase CSS and web graphics than linguistics.

tacker2000 2mo ago
Yes, why include Bavarian explicitly? You could have included Tyrolean, Viennese, or whatever which are all local dialects on par with "Bavarian". These all belong to the Upper German dialects, as seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects Looks like this is just some Vibecoded app, with no real science behind it.
- nuxi 2mo ago
  Aren't most Austrian dialects considered as sub-dialects of Bavarian? Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_language#Geographical_distribution_and_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_language#Geographical...
ithkuil 2mo ago
Does it mean the Lombard dialect of northern Italy is colonial sociolect too?