What is Standard German? (was: Re: CHAT letter names)

> Date:    Tue, 2 Mar 2004 23:37:27 +0100
> From:    Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
> Subject: Re: CHAT letter names (was: CHAT Etruscana etc)
>
> Hi!
>
> Just to clarify, I do not talk about the one-and-only, maybe
> constructed, Standard High German that probably no-one speaks and all
> people claim people from Hanover speak.
Why should  people from Hanover speak Std. High German? Hanover should
definitely be beyond the machen-maken line, i.e. Low German (Ostfälisch?)
should be spoken there... what happened? Was Hanover the first town to lose
Plattdeutsch completely?

I've always wondered how far Std. German can be considered a conlang. You
know, in Italy you have Florence, in England you have the South-East, in
France you have Paris... the Saxon dialect Luther allegedly used to
translate the Bible ("Ich rede nach der sachsischen Kanzlei...") was and
still is quite different from the language you can find in his Bible (i.e.
early Std. German)... as a result, there is no area (Hanover?) in present
day Germany where the standard is the native local dialect.

Luca

>  I mean a wide range of shades
> of the High German language.  A dialect as I referred to above would
> need a different spelling.
>
> I really only know the lack of distinction from younger people and
> from people from coastal areas and I've been paying attention to
> exactly that phenomenon, to see whether the distinction will be
> gradually lost.
>
> Bye,
>   Henrik
>
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