Re: Scandinavian meeting.

Hello!

On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 11:39 PM, Carsten Becker <carbeck@...> wrote:
> Matahaniya ang caeruleancentaur
> <caeruleancentaur@...>:
>
> > I was able to talk to the lady of the house in
> > Hochdeutsch, but her husband only spoke Plattdeutsch.
>
> Except they don't speak Platt down in the South, unless that
> woman's husband was from Northern Germany. :-P
Actually, many German dialects refer to themselves as "Platt" or
"Plattdeutsch"; for example, in Saabrigge schwäddse mir aach Pladd (=
in Saarbrücken, which by no stretch of the imagination can be
considered part of northern Germany, we speak something called "Platt"
too). But to avoid confusion, it's probably best to call dialects
dialects and use "Plattdeutsch" only for the Low German dialects, or
better yet, call dialects dialects and call the Low German dialects
Low German dialects. ;-)

If the husband spoke the local dialect, that was probably something
close to Swiss German ("Swiss" dialect features actually stretch all
the way to Vorarlberg in western Austria), which is pretty scary for
foreigners who know only Standard German (and even for many Germans --
can you believe they actually dub Swiss movies for German audiences?).
Unless he really came from the North, as Carsten pointed out. But
those dialects can be pretty scary for foreigners too, I guess -- you
expect people to speak something resembling German and what you get is
actually more like Dutch or even (yikes!) Danish. ;-) (FWIW, I've
noticed that I need about the same amount of mental energy for
understanding Swiss German -- not their idea of Standard German, but
the actual dialects (well, at least Züridütsch and Bärndütsch) -- as
for understanding Dutch. I guess that puts me right smack in the
middle of the German(ish) dialect landscape.)

Regards,
Julia

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)

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