Diglossia

Me govanen!
Lars Henrik Mathiesen tetent:
>
> > Date:         Mon, 11 Sep 2000 18:47:57 -0400
> > From:         Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
>
> > <despairing look>  You mean I'm taking German and I'll be able to read
> > abstruse German topology text but I won't be able to *talk* to anyone?  I
> > should've listened harder when my boyfriend made some vague mention of
> > High/Low German.
>
> Hey now, I'm sure Germans could write lucid math texts if they wanted
> to. But don't despair, I don't think you'll be able to find a Platt
> speaker who isn't bilingual in High German as well. (Unless they live
> in the Netherlands --- I think there is a small pocket there).
Actually, quite a large pocket, encompassing the provinces of Groningen,
Drenthe, Overijssel and the east half of Gelderland.  And those people
are all bilingual in Dutch, and quite many of them quadrilingual: they
speak Low German, Dutch, High German and English.

> In fact, the Standard German spoken in Northern Germany is actually
> quite Standard, because the local dialects are a different languge.
> The problem is Bavarians, Austrians and that lot, who think their
> regional variants of High German are intelligible to people who have
> learnt Standard German as a second language.
Yes, that's the problem.  They *think* they speak German, while they do
not.
We here in northern Germany *know* that our mother language is something
different than standard German, and thus bother learning the standard
language, while those foppish southerners apparently haven't realized
yet.

ObConlang:
The situation in southern Kemr might be similar: in those areas where
the native language is Kerno, people speak better Brithenig than where
it is a non-standard dialect of Brithenig proper.

Syld,
Jörg.