Dealing with German dialects

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Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby Kraut » Thu Jul 12, 2018 7:32 pm

Sprechender Sprachatlas von Bayerisch-Schwaben (mit angrenzendem Oberbayern)

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Sprachatlas Baden-Württemberg

https://escience-center.uni-tuebingen.d ... .674/8.989
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Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Jul 12, 2018 7:46 pm

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Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby kulaputra » Thu Jul 12, 2018 8:18 pm

zenmonkey wrote:I'm Mexican. We have songs and comedy about the difficulty of understanding other speakers. As do Germans. As sometimes, in some environments we don't have "10 hours" to get used to a lect. Remember sometimes these are very much related a variety of socio-economic factors that do not come across in a learned L2.


Every language community with more then a million speakers probably has such jokes. I've heard such jokes in every language I speak or have dabbled in- English, Spanish, Kannada, French, Hindi, Chinese- but it's categorically different for languages like English, Spanish, Kannada, French, which have dialectical variation, as opposed to languages like Chinese or German where what are straight-up different languages are referred to as dialects.

zenmonkey wrote:


What a throwback, I haven't seen this video in a minute. It's well-written but doesn't really make your point, given it entirely has to do with slang (the kind of variation you might see between Standard Germans of various countries, but not between various German "dialects"). The very fact this video would be funny across the Spanish-speaking world kind of undercuts your point.

zenmonkey wrote:You understand everything?


I got the gist on the first listen and my comprehension only improved on the next several listens. This is also affected speech and is not reflective of my interactions with Colombians/Dominicans/Cubans/Boricuans (in the USA, at least).

A more accurate and representative video IMO is this one:



The only accent I had any real trouble with was the Chilean and that's because I've never (that I know of) talked to a Chilean person or watched a Chilean TV show in my life. I still understood it fairly well though.

zenmonkey wrote:If I understand what you are trying to formulate is that standard forms of German 'dialects' are less mutually intelligible than standard forms for Spanish from different regions. I'd tend to agree. However, the variety of idiolects with the interjection of local slangs is much stronger in LatAm creating language difficulties.


I think what you probably mean to say is that comprehension issues between Spanish dialects are usually because of the use of local jargon, whereas comprehension issues between various German "dialects" are because they are literally different languages with dramatic lexical, phonological, and grammatical differences. Which is kind of my point. Spanish dialectical diversity and German language diversity aren't comparable.

A more apt comparison would be between Castilian, Portuguese, Galician, and Catalan.

zenmonkey wrote:But, on the other hand, the majority of Germans today learn Standard and show register shift when needed.


The very fact that a Standard is (needs to be) taught is kind of my point. There needn't be a global Spanish standard because there are not multiple Spanish languages. There are many German languages.
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Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby tastyonions » Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:19 pm

The German dialects seem closer to Italian "dialects" (many of which are really separate languages in the same branch of the Romance family) than to Spanish regional variations.

Most Spanish variation of pronunciation is down to deletion or inclusion of syllable final S, seseo versus distinción, and harder or softer pronunciation of J. The grammatical variation is close to nil. The biggest challenge is vocabulary difference.
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Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby Iversen » Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:29 pm

For me the main problem with the German dialects (or whatever they are) is that I won't hear them when I visit Germany, Austria or Switzerland as a tourist - I only hear Hochdeutsch with minor regional differences. Ok, I can eavesdrop in busses and or other places, and certain kinds of TV programs (like those from the zoos) let the German speak as they do when there aren't any tourists around, but that's not quite enough for a language nerd like me. However this is not just a German problem - you could also visit Denmark without discovering that we actually have some old dialects, which are surprisingly different in their hardcore versions.

As for German I have actually spent quite some time on Low German (Platt) since I learned to understand it by listening to "Talk op Platt" in the good old days while such programs still existed, but I have unfortunately not been able to hear or read much Swiss German or Kölsch. However the 'mild' versions I have been exposed to didn't present much of a problem for me. Of course there are some regional words which I don't know, but you rarely meet the really hardcore dialect speakers, and in particular you rarely hear people speak in dialect about things like old agrarian tools where my percentage of incomprehensible words is near 100% even in standard High German.

When I do study 'dialects' I treat them as languages - and things like Platt and Scots in fact have a long history as independent speech forms, but nowadays they have moved inexorably towards respectively Standard High German and Standard (Northern) British English because their speakers have tried to speak in ways that could be understood by linguistically challenged speakers of the standard languages. And that of course makes them easier to understand for outsiders, but also less interesting.

Apart from special cases like Platt I do not try systematically to limit myself to one single regional variant of any of the languages I have studied. Ok, I do say "moin" in Northern German and "Grüss Gott" in Bayern, and I may roll an r in Bayern or Austria, but that's it. I don't have to speak like the natives of any single locality as long as they understand me.
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Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:30 pm

kulaputra wrote:A more apt comparison would be between Castilian, Portuguese, Galician, and Catalan.

Somewhat true - and you can add Occitan, Aragonese, Fala, etc... hence the ongoing issue of defining language vs dialect... someone should do a study on the distance between German dialects and Romance languages.

kulaputra wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:But, on the other hand, the majority of Germans today learn Standard and show register shift when needed.

The very fact that a Standard is (needs to be) taught is kind of my point. There needn't be a global Spanish standard because there are not multiple Spanish languages. There are many German languages.


Standard Spanish (local variety) is taught in LatAm and Spain. It just happens that these countries, as separate autonomous entities have developed their own sovereign institutes. And what is often spoken in communities can be quite the shift from standard that a native (like me) will feel lost in certain language communities.

Perhaps it is due to the size of and geography of the Spanish speaking world, perhaps it is due to economic sociolects but my experience holds - I have seen situations where difficulty in understanding were sufficiently significant to be compatible in strategies needed to resolve language misunderstandings. Living in Germany now - these dialectical differences are, in my opinion, relatively easily overcome due to functional bilingualism between dialect and Standard German as taught in schools.

So, you see differences based on your experience, I see similarities based on mine. six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Nothing is perfectly exact - the question raised was how to deal with German dialects - which is what I answered, addressing similarities of experience across another language community and not a linguist's calques of dialectical comparison between two language groups.

Now, you say you've never experienced this.
Ok, but it doesn't invalidate what I've said I've actually seen and experienced.
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Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Thu Jul 12, 2018 11:08 pm

Kauderwelsch sells books for 14(!) different German dialects.

Bairisch
Berlinerisch
Elsässich
Frankisch
Hamburgisch
Kölsch
Osterreichisch
Plattdüütsch
Ruhrdeutsch
Sächsisch
Schwabisch
Schwiizertüütsch
Tirolerisch
Wienerisch

https://www.reise-know-how.de

I’ve owned Kauderwelsch books but not really used them, but they seem like a solid product.
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Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby Iversen » Thu Jul 12, 2018 11:21 pm

I have own some of the Kauderwelsch booklets that relate to German dialects and others that treat fullblown foreign languages. My main objection to the dialect booklets is that they rely on curiosities and folklore to a larger extent than the books that describe foreign languages. The latter actually resemble the Assimil booklets in French to such a degree that I suspect there is some kind of connection between the two series.
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Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby Philipp » Fri Jul 13, 2018 8:44 am

That reminds me of this old joke: A Swabian, a Swiss and a northern German are sitting on a train heading towards Germany. The Swiss asks the northern German: "Sind‘s a z‘Züri gsi?“ He doesn‘t understand and the Swiss tries again, more slowly:“Sind Sie auch in Züri gsi?“ The northern German still doesn‘t understand and looks puzzled at the Swabian, who finally chimes in:“D‘Herr moint gwä.“

In Swabian gewesen becomes gwä and in Swiss German gsi. In both dialects the simple past doesn't exist, so the question the Swiss gentleman asks is: "Sind Sie auch in Zürich gewesen?“, or in Standard German, "Waren sie auch in Zürich?“.
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Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby Chung » Fri Jul 13, 2018 1:38 pm

Lawyer&Mom wrote:Kauderwelsch sells books for 14(!) different German dialects.

Bairisch
Berlinerisch
Elsässich
Frankisch
Hamburgisch
Kölsch
Osterreichisch
Plattdüütsch
Ruhrdeutsch
Sächsisch
Schwabisch
Schwiizertüütsch
Tirolerisch
Wienerisch

https://www.reise-know-how.de

I’ve owned Kauderwelsch books but not really used them, but they seem like a solid product.


I've seen some of these guides on dialect in several bookstores in Germany, but have never bought them, quirky and informative as some of them are. On a related note, I do recommend to anyone who's interested in German slang to get a copy of Kauderwelsch Sprachführer German Slang - the real German which according to a couple of German friends in their 30s to whom I showed the book, is the best guide in hardcopy on slang used in the current decade. What we like about this book is how idiomatically the author translates German colloquialisms or vulgarisms into English. For example it translates the sarcastic Ich denk' nich' dran! as "I don't think so!". When I first showed this to one of my friends she thought that the English translation wasn't quite right because it seemed neutral. After I had explained that the author's underlining of "think so" signals to us native English speakers that we're pronouncing things such that it turns a neutral refusal to an expressive one whose tone matches Ich denk' nich' dran! she then understood. I guess that translating the German sentence with "The hell I/you/(s)he/it/we/they will!" could have worked too and made things more obvious.

There are counterparts meant for Germans curious about American, Australian, British, Canadian, and New Zealander slang, but when I browsed these at a bookshop, I found that they more often contained translations in standard German of the English colloquialisms and vulgarisms rather than idiomatic or colloquial ones in German matching or approaching the saltiness or edge of the English originals. In other words they didn't really do the converse of the German slang phrasebook for English-speakers, and so the German reader doesn't always get the explicit hint of the undertone of an English phrase or term when provided a translation in standard German rather than colloquial German.

For example, merely translating "I'm pissed off" to a German using the standard and less edgy Ich bin verärgert is like translating Ich bin angepisst for me, a native speaker of English, with "I'm annoyed." It would be more helpful to me to get translations that match more closely with the register and undertone of the original, whenever feasible, instead of ones focused on the meaning. Failing that, a footnote on usage is the next best option. In this way, it'd be like signalling to Germans that using "Shit!" as a colloquial exclamation of frustration doesn't go down as well among us native speakers of English as it does among them. "Shit!" as used among Germans (which is nowadays fairly common) is perceived as milder than doing the same with Scheiße! which not only means "Shit!" but is as coarse as an Aussie, Kiwi, Yank, et al. saying "Shit!". In this example, I would translate a German's use of "Shit!" with "Damn!" or even "Darn!" whose relative mildness to us English-speakers more accurately conveys the undertone, while signalling that it's being used to show the German speaker's frustration.
Last edited by Chung on Fri Jul 13, 2018 4:36 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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