Dealing with German dialects

General discussion about learning languages
drp9341
Orange Belt
Posts: 241
Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2016 1:21 pm
Location: NY, USA
Languages: Native: English (US)
C1/C2: Spanish, Italian
B2+: Portuguese
B2: French, Polish
A1: Russian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=5978
x 962

Dealing with German dialects

Postby drp9341 » Thu Jul 12, 2018 5:48 am

Hello everyone!

I am not seriously considering learning German, but today after talking with some Dominicans for a while, and remembering just how diverse Spanish is, I started thinking about my experience in Austria, with a German dialect.

A lot of members on this forum speak German, but I hear very little talk of the dialects. (You can skip to the bolded text at the bottom for the short version of this question :) However, the information below might be entertaining to some.

I spent about a week with friends of the family after my car broke down near their town in Austria last summer on the way Italy. The whole family speaks fantastic English, and in retrospect it was an insanely awesome coincidence. HOWEVER, I noticed that their German was crazy. They're live in Villach, and have been there for generations. Even though I don't speak German, I studied it for about 6 months, and I'm somewhat familiar with it, especially in terms of it's structure and phonetics, (though I've forgotten so much vocabulary :shock: )

They really enjoyed "teaching me German" and I actually revived it very slightly however, I only got "input" from written sources and the radio / TV. I asked them a lot about the differences between their German and standard German, and I actually recorded lots of stuff on my phone, which for some reason I can't find. I would say something in German, (often they would correct it,) and then I would ask them how they would say it in their dialect. It was really different. None of them are really into linguistics or languages, but they on multiple occasions would tell me how their grammar differed etc. etc.

Like I said, I'm not interested in Germany. I spent 2 weeks there, in Heidelberg and Munich, and while it was beautiful, and I find their history and culture super cool I actually became less motivated to learn the language. (probably the first person on this forum to say this lol)

Austria is another story, I really liked it. However, THE DIALECT:
Situation #1: one night when we were out drinking, I met the boyfriend of one of the girls they hang out with, who was from Hamburg, but has spent lots of time in Villach. At one point everyone was getting pretty drunk and rowdy, and he came over to me and said, "I can't understand anything they're saying, so I'll just talk to you."

Situation #2: I was out to eat with their family, and the table next to us was laughing and talking really loudly, I jokingly asked the mother, "was that joke really that funny?" and she said, "they're from [I totally forget where she said, but it was relatively nearby,] I can't understand a word of it!" and they all started chuckling.

I know that Swiss German is basically a different language, but Austria surprised me. The fact that everyone from this very educated and "well to do" family spoke "in our accent unless I go somewhere different," was really shocking. To clarify, they said that the only people can't speak standard German "just as good as we speak in our accent," are old people, and they just prefer to speak the way they speak.


Summary:
1. How hard is it to socialize with German speakers of a different dialect if you speak standard German at a B2+ level.
2. How hard is it to become "fluent" in a dialect, (obviously this will vary depending on the dialect.)
3. How would you compare the German dialects to lets say... The Romance Languages... or even English dialects/accents.
4. What do foreigners generally do when they move somewhere where everyone speaks dialect?


Thanks folks. I want to post an interesting side note about Irish accents, but I might save that for a later post!
8 x

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Jul 12, 2018 8:03 am

I live in Germany so I think I can give you a bit of my personal experience with dialects and attempt to answer your questions. I first lived in a small village just south of Munich where Bayerisch was spoken by the local merchants to the point where my mechanic and I only communicated in writing. I just could not understand when he spoke. He found this hilarious. So...

1. How hard is it to socialize with German speakers of a different dialect if you speak standard German at a B2+ level.
Not hard at all, as a non-German, you have a built in excuse and can always say you didn't understand - be it accent or structure - Germans are generally used to having these comprehension struggles and I've yet to meet a person frustrated by those types of questions. If you've learned standard German you'll do fine. Sometimes conversation between Germans will be difficult to get but the same thing happens to Germans.
In my case, if my office my assistant would speak in dialect to one of the managers (Bavarian) and I would generally understand less, but it seemed I'd get more than the team member from the north of Germany. There is a 'meta-awareness' that this is going on and people will adjust.

2. How hard is it to become "fluent" in a dialect, (obviously this will vary depending on the dialect.)

Depends on your environment. It's like learning a language. My youngest daughters started kindergarten school in Bavarian and spoke with that after about 6 months. They then had to relearn to standard German (at the French school in Munich) which also happened rather quickly. They've now lost their Bavarian.

An American that cycled with us on Sundays had landed in a small village and only came into Munich on weekends - he had come to Germany to learn about beer making. After about 2 years of intensive study in his small town, purely in a monolingual Bavarian environment, he was fluent in Bavarian but couldn't really speak Standard.

3. How would you compare the German dialects to lets say... The Romance Languages... or even English dialects/accents.

German dialects are as varied as Spanish dialects. There are Cuban, Puerto Rican and Peruvian speakers that speak in dialect that I cannot understand (go see the Fluffy video on Spanish accents). Like in the UK and France dialectal differences have geographical, economic and social implications.

On a project I led here, now near Frankfurt - one of my employees spoke Swabian and had a hard time adjusting to Standard. For some of my local German collaborators with their Hessen ears this was frustrating. So sometimes it was just easier to switch to English even when I was not around - as an emotionally neutral ground for them.

You'd think that never happens in Spanish, right? Well, my boss a few years back was Puerto Rican and when she spoke Spanish to a group of Mexicans the differences were large enough that we finally worked better in English.

4. What do foreigners generally do when they move somewhere where everyone speaks dialect?
Sink or swim, baby. It's attitude that matters - you either develop an ear for the dialect and work on learning it or you isolate yourself and leave after a little while. This is a common theme in the expat groups on FB. It's not just language but the social / economic interactions of the outsider in a small town - it sometimes works and sometimes the differences are too large.

My GF learned German here in Hessen. She learned to pronounced 'Ich' like 'ish' in fish. We've had long discussions about this .... :lol:
12 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
tarvos
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2889
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 11:13 am
Location: The Lowlands
Languages: Native: NL, EN
Professional: ES, RU
Speak well: DE, FR, RO, EO, SV
Speak reasonably: IT, ZH, PT, NO, EL, CZ
Need improvement: PO, IS, HE, JP, KO, HU, FI
Passive: AF, DK, LAT
Dabbled in: BRT, ZH (SH), BG, EUS, ZH (CAN), and a whole lot more.
Language Log: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... PN=1&TPN=1
x 6093
Contact:

Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby tarvos » Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:18 am

1. How hard is it to socialize with German speakers of a different dialect if you speak standard German at a B2+ level.

You get used to it. If they speak pure Bavarian or something you'll need some help from a local, and my best friend is Bavarian so I had that at hand. If it's Platt, then for me that's not so bad, because I'm Dutch. I'll usually work it out somehow, but it takes me longer than if people speak Hochdeutsch.

2. How hard is it to become "fluent" in a dialect, (obviously this will vary depending on the dialect.)

Less standardization makes everything harder.

3. How would you compare the German dialects to lets say... The Romance Languages... or even English dialects/accents.

Same as in Spanish - it varies a lot. I have no trouble with Platt-ish influenced German, but full on Bavarian or Swiss German will throw me for a loop.

4. What do foreigners generally do when they move somewhere where everyone speaks dialect?


Depends; do you need to be in contact with the dialect? I've never had that need, and my German friends speak Hochdeutsch.
0 x
I hope your world is kind.

Is a girl.

kulaputra
Orange Belt
Posts: 221
Joined: Sun Jun 10, 2018 4:04 am
Languages: English (N), Kannada (semi-native, illiterate), Spanish (~C1), Hindi (A2 speech, B1 comprehension), French (A1 speech, A2 listening, >=B1 reading), Mandarin Chinese (~A1)
x 331

Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby kulaputra » Thu Jul 12, 2018 2:41 pm

zenmonkey wrote:
3. How would you compare the German dialects to lets say... The Romance Languages... or even English dialects/accents.

German dialects are as varied as Spanish dialects. There are Cuban, Puerto Rican and Peruvian speakers that speak in dialect that I cannot understand (go see the Fluffy video on Spanish accents). Like in the UK and France dialectal differences have geographical, economic and social implications.

On a project I led here, now near Frankfurt - one of my employees spoke Swabian and had a hard time adjusting to Standard. For some of my local German collaborators with their Hessen ears this was frustrating. So sometimes it was just easier to switch to English even when I was not around - as an emotionally neutral ground for them.

You'd think that never happens in Spanish, right? Well, my boss a few years back was Puerto Rican and when she spoke Spanish to a group of Mexicans the differences were large enough that we finally worked better in English.


While I don't know German, based on what you and others have said and my knowledge of Spanish, this doesn't sound right. I've been in environments with Spanish speakers from multiple countries. I've never seen anyone have an issue with comprehension given a couple hours of getting used to the language and/or a willingness on the parts of the interlocutors to adapt their speech accordingly. In your case it sounds like the interlocutors were not interested in doing that, possibly because their English was highly proficient anyways.

As a non native speaker, I've also never struggled with an accent given at most 10 hours or so of listening to it, usually less. My understanding is that this simply isn't possible between German dialects separated by significant distances, much like Arabic "dialects."

There is a reason there is a Standard German but no singular Standard Spanish. Standard German, after all, only came to prominence in the last 200 years or so; prior to that, there was a dialectical continuum from the Netherlands as far east as Prussia and as far south as Switzerland.
1 x
Iha śāriputra: rūpaṃ śūnyatā śūnyataiva rūpaṃ; rūpān na pṛthak śūnyatā śunyatāyā na pṛthag rūpaṃ; yad rūpaṃ sā śūnyatā; ya śūnyatā tad rūpaṃ.

--Heart Sutra

Please correct any of my non-native languages, if needed!

Kraut
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2599
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:37 pm
Languages: German (N)
French (C)
English (C)
Spanish (A2)
Lithuanian
x 3204

Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby Kraut » Thu Jul 12, 2018 3:05 pm

There are also different registers within a dialect. I normally speak a "milder" form of it, "broad" Swabian is difficult to learn, you have to grow up with it. It sounds uncouth and you can still find it outside the towns. I recently had a problem with the warden of a recycling site. When I switched to his register all was fine.
1 x

User avatar
Systematiker
Blue Belt
Posts: 823
Joined: Tue May 10, 2016 6:09 pm
Languages: ENG (N); DEU (C2+) // SWG (~C1); BAR (~C1); SPA (4/3); FRA (~C1); SCO (~C1); NLD (~B2*); LAT (Latinum Bavaricum); GRC (Graecum Bavaricum); CAT (~B2*); POR (~B2*); SWE (~B2*); HBO (Hebraicum); DAN (~B1*); RUS (~A2); KOR (~A1); FAS (still a raw beginner)
*Averaged for high receptive skill
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7332
x 2070

Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby Systematiker » Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:57 pm

1. Most people will accommodate you, you're a learner of the language. See zenmonkey's response to this (actually his whole response is really good). Insert beer, and it will get harder :lol:
2. Depends on your base in German before. I've learned Swabian and Bavarian quite well, but only after learning German well. It gets hard to learn or speak it pure, because many people will still be speaking "flavored standard" with you.
3. I argue repeatedly that these are languages, not dialects. They're as mutually unintelligible as the Romance languages, in some cases, more. I understand e.g. more Norwegian (from other Germanic languages) than I do Frankish (from German and even close dialects)
4. Some people learn the half-mixture that's common in the south, some people learn it as a lark, some people learn nothing and rely on being accommodated. Depends on the area, and what sort of involvement in the local community they want. I pursued a couple out of interest, and it's been fun so far.
5 x

User avatar
Chung
Blue Belt
Posts: 529
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2015 9:39 pm
Languages: SPEAKS: English*, French
STUDIES: Hungarian, Italian, Ukrainian
OTHER: Czech, German, Polish, Slovak
STUDIED: Azeri, BCMS/SC, Estonian, Finnish, Korean, Latin, Northern Saami, Russian, Slovenian, Turkish
DABBLED: Bashkir, Chuvash, Crimean Tatar, Inari Saami, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Meadow Mari, Mongolian, Romanian, Tatar, Turkmen, Tuvan, Uzbek
x 2309

Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby Chung » Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:59 pm

drp9341 wrote:Summary:
1. How hard is it to socialize with German speakers of a different dialect if you speak standard German at a B2+ level.
2. How hard is it to become "fluent" in a dialect, (obviously this will vary depending on the dialect.)
3. How would you compare the German dialects to lets say... The Romance Languages... or even English dialects/accents.
4. What do foreigners generally do when they move somewhere where everyone speaks dialect?


Thanks folks. I want to post an interesting side note about Irish accents, but I might save that for a later post!


1. It depends on whether these people actually do speak dialect with you. When any speech community these days encounters an obvious outsider, you the outsider will often get addressed in the standard language and sometimes rather formally. In these cases understanding isn't too hard, although you might make a case that socialization could be faintly tricky since you're all using a register that doesn't have the same aura of familiarity, friendliness or solidarity as something less formal or regional would. I've seen this in Germany and Austria. In Switzerland this behaviour is very frequent considering how much Swiss German dialects differ from standard variants of German. The reality is that an outsider who's fluent in any standard variant of German and/or in anything other than certain Alemannic sub-dialects (i.e. what's spoken in Liechtenstein, far southwestern Germany, and far western Austria) will really struggle to understand Swiss German, which is primarily spoken. The Swiss reaction then is to use Swiss Standard German with these outsiders.

2. Assuming that you already can use standard German at B2 or better, I'd say that getting fluent in a dialect will probably take up to a year, assuming also that you frequently interact with people who use dialect among themselves and with you. This might be complicated though that Germans are a lot more mobile than before. In most cities, you get a real mix of people. For example Munich is full of Germans who don't speak Bavarian natively, and to facilitate communication, they'll rely more on standard German than their native Berlinerisch, Platt, Schwäbisch, Badisch, Kölsch etc. This kind of goes back to 1. with the converse that someone from Munich realizes that not everyone he/she meets will speak some Bavarian sub-dialect and will also end up using standard German (perhaps with a Bavarian lilt) or even English.

Note that when it comes to standard German, its basis is in dialects from what is now east-central Germany as used around the 16th century. As a rough guide then, someone speaking just standard German would be more likely to understand dialects used in a band stretching from Fulda to Dresden than dialects elsewhere, although this isn't as great as it seems. Let's say that you who knows standard German at B2 or more might grasp something dialectal in that band through central Germany on the first go 50% of the time. In comparison, your ability to do the same with dialectal forms outside this band in central Germany would be a lot less and could even be as low as 0%. Picking up 50% of dialect on the first go with your knowledge of standard German still isn't all that great, to say nothing of succeeding at say 40% or even none of the time. On a related note you might pick up some east-central German dialect a little more readily than ones used elsewhere, all else equal.

3. I'd compare German dialects to something like English ones in the UK but rather in opposite directions. Like the transition of dialects in the Midlands to Scots the further north you go, the dialects in central Germany start to resemble Swiss German ever more the further southwest you go. My ability to understand Scots (especially in speech) is comparable to that of most Germans or Austrians trying to understand Swiss German, and because of how difficult it is for me to understand (let alone produce) that much in Scots, I consider it a language rather than a dialect. Another point is that while standard British English is based on predecessors of dialects of southern England, standard German of Germany is based on predecessors of dialects of central Germany.

On the other hand, standard variants of German differ about as much as standard variants of English. The overlap between Standard Swiss German (which is also used in Liechtenstein) and the respective standards used in Austria, Germany and Luxembourg is very high such that (at least in writing), native speakers from each country can't reliably and consistently tell that they're dealing with output from a different country without encountering a sufficiently long sample of that output with dead giveaways. It's like how I can't tell consistently that I'm reading some randomly-selected text of UK English or US English without seeing giveaways in spelling conventions (e.g. "centre" in the UK vs. "center" in the USA) or a few idiosyncracies such as "...agree a time to meet" in the UK versus "...agree on a time" in the USA. In speech its obviously easier to distinguish variants quickly because of accentual or prosodic differences.

4. If these foreigners don't go full on in learning dialect, their output will show more characteristics of the local dialect to varying degrees. I don't know of any foreigners in person who spoke standard German and then picked up dialect after moving, but Systematiker is a better reference here since he lived in southern Germany for a while and picked up Bavarian and Swabian to go with his standard German. I do know a couple of cases involving native speakers though. One case involves a pair of sisters from Frankfurt with one of them going to study in Vienna for a year. The sister who stayed in Frankfurt told me that her sister's standard German with its vague Hessian accent sounded more Viennese by the end of that year. In another case, I have an acquaintance who works in Linz in northern Austria but comes from Innsbruck in southwestern Ausria. Upon returining to Linz after her visiting her family in the south, her speech often sounds more like the south Austro-Bavarian subdialect of Innsbruck and it usually takes her a few days being back in Linz before that southern Austrian dialect fades. It's not bad overall, and since I'm a foreigner, what I perceive as dialect comes out in how she pronounces Austrian Standard German rather than also using a lot of regionalisms which she knows that people like me wouldn't understand.
8 x

kulaputra
Orange Belt
Posts: 221
Joined: Sun Jun 10, 2018 4:04 am
Languages: English (N), Kannada (semi-native, illiterate), Spanish (~C1), Hindi (A2 speech, B1 comprehension), French (A1 speech, A2 listening, >=B1 reading), Mandarin Chinese (~A1)
x 331

Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby kulaputra » Thu Jul 12, 2018 5:31 pm

How would people who don't live in a German-speaking country go about learning one of the "dialects"? Would that even be possible?
0 x
Iha śāriputra: rūpaṃ śūnyatā śūnyataiva rūpaṃ; rūpān na pṛthak śūnyatā śunyatāyā na pṛthag rūpaṃ; yad rūpaṃ sā śūnyatā; ya śūnyatā tad rūpaṃ.

--Heart Sutra

Please correct any of my non-native languages, if needed!

User avatar
Systematiker
Blue Belt
Posts: 823
Joined: Tue May 10, 2016 6:09 pm
Languages: ENG (N); DEU (C2+) // SWG (~C1); BAR (~C1); SPA (4/3); FRA (~C1); SCO (~C1); NLD (~B2*); LAT (Latinum Bavaricum); GRC (Graecum Bavaricum); CAT (~B2*); POR (~B2*); SWE (~B2*); HBO (Hebraicum); DAN (~B1*); RUS (~A2); KOR (~A1); FAS (still a raw beginner)
*Averaged for high receptive skill
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7332
x 2070

Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby Systematiker » Thu Jul 12, 2018 6:20 pm

kulaputra wrote:How would people who don't live in a German-speaking country go about learning one of the "dialects"? Would that even be possible?


Jein.

So, I want to say no, and I want to say that it would be nigh-impossible to maintain because you need reliable practice in a speech community, but there's always an exception to the rule. I could see the possibility of someone who is already very, very good at Hochdeutsch learning one register of one variant of Swabian, if you also have a patient and supportive native (who is also willing to read aloud to make some L-R materials for you). Bairisch you could perhaps approximate this way, too, but I wouldn't know of a resource with sufficient material in one regional variant (although as a whole the continuum is the best represented in media one might access) nor of a sufficiently large text to be of use (although one could, I suppose, use that massive multi-volume Bavarian dictionary).
0 x

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Re: Dealing with German dialects

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Jul 12, 2018 7:21 pm

kulaputra wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:
3. How would you compare the German dialects to lets say... The Romance Languages... or even English dialects/accents.

German dialects are as varied as Spanish dialects. There are Cuban, Puerto Rican and Peruvian speakers that speak in dialect that I cannot understand (go see the Fluffy video on Spanish accents). Like in the UK and France dialectal differences have geographical, economic and social implications.

On a project I led here, now near Frankfurt - one of my employees spoke Swabian and had a hard time adjusting to Standard. For some of my local German collaborators with their Hessen ears this was frustrating. So sometimes it was just easier to switch to English even when I was not around - as an emotionally neutral ground for them.

You'd think that never happens in Spanish, right? Well, my boss a few years back was Puerto Rican and when she spoke Spanish to a group of Mexicans the differences were large enough that we finally worked better in English.


While I don't know German, based on what you and others have said and my knowledge of Spanish, this doesn't sound right. I've been in environments with Spanish speakers from multiple countries. I've never seen anyone have an issue with comprehension given a couple hours of getting used to the language and/or a willingness on the parts of the interlocutors to adapt their speech accordingly. In your case it sounds like the interlocutors were not interested in doing that, possibly because their English was highly proficient anyways.


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.



We even see tv shows just focused on not understanding each other.



You understand everything?




kulaputra wrote:As a non native speaker, I've also never struggled with an accent given at most 10 hours or so of listening to it, usually less. My understanding is that this simply isn't possible between German dialects separated by significant distances, much like Arabic "dialects."

There is a reason there is a Standard German but no singular Standard Spanish. Standard German, after all, only came to prominence in the last 200 years or so; prior to that, there was a dialectical continuum from the Netherlands as far east as Prussia and as far south as Switzerland.


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.

To some extent, some people cannot easily speak a higher register - my old boss, for example, had a Spanish with a social register that clearly marked her background and she used non-standard words that Mexican workers could not comprehend - no adjustment to accent is going to eliminate that. These variants and others created by the language diversities in LatAm (where Spanish is a second language to more than 5 million people, the same is not true in Germany) also create influences that create divergent idiolects.

But, on the other hand, the majority of Germans today learn Standard and show register shift when needed.
But this still happens ;) :

Last edited by zenmonkey on Thu Jul 12, 2018 7:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
3 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests