Re: Demotic/Koine/Prakit

John Cowan wrote:

> BP Jonsson scripsit:
>
> > IME *speakers* of Standard German are rare in any ethnic/religious
> > group.  Most would be actors or news readers.  There is more like a
> > continuum, with very few being 100% acrolectal.  Some 20% local color is
> > normal.
>
> Sure.  I hesitated a while before inserting "standard or regional", and
> probably should have said "standard-to-regional".  Nevertheless, and
> without exact knowledge, I am willing to bet that the German spoken by
> Jews ran closer to the standard than that of their neighbors, simply
> *because* they were isolated from the mainstream population.
>
> My mother, whose family had pretensions to social superiority over the
> surrounding population, spoke a rather abnormally standard version
> of German, which turned out to be useful when she moved to the U.S.
> and became a teacher of German.
According to German friends, I speak German like a Plattdeutscher and don't
sound English. Only when they found out my surname did they guess that I was
actually English. This is through no conscious effort on my part either.
Odd, huh? Personally, I can't tell if someone's speaking with a Berlin or a
Bonn accent in German, although I can work out French accents quite easily.

Dan