Thread: German dialects

Hallo Alles!

I d like to know if the difference between dialects is big, and do all people understand the literary language? Can it happen that i will come to Germany and people wont understand me(not because of my awfull german )? And also there s a myth that germans hardly understand each other, how much truth is here? And are there people whose native language is literary german? and if they exist how many they are?

Thanks in advance

Tschüss!

There are really big differences between dialects in Germany.
But everybody understands the literary language ("Hochdeutsch"). And everyone is at least expected to be able to speak "Hochdeutsch".
The biggest differences are between the northern and southern parts of Germany. The deviations form Hochdeutsch are in general small in the northern part of Germany (with the exeption of "Plattdeutsch" wich is rahter similar to Dutch and can be looked upon as a own language).
In each part of Germany dialects are more distinct in rural areas. The bigger the towns the people live in the closer the language is to Hochdeutsch. The tendency is that dialects are vanishing. That is caused by radio and TV and also by the increasing mobility which forces people to communicate in every day live with people from all parts of the country.

Normally you can hear if a person comes from Munich, Frankfurt or Hamburg but it's not a problem to understand each other.
But if for example a farmer from Bavaria speaks in his natural mother tongue and makes no efforts approximate Hochdeutsch people from northern Germany will have real problems to understand him.

The people from Hannover are supposed to speak the best German that is they set the standard for German pronounciation.

In Austria and Switzerland they are speaking German, too. But many people can't understand them. In cologne people can understand dutch because some people in cologne speaks a dialekt that sounds a bit like dutch. I think in the east and south of germany most german people, even the children, have a dialekt. When i am there i cant undrestand older people. The younger people are learning "hochdeutsch" at school.

PS: and you can see most of us german pupils are bad in writing english

Ick snack Platt.
Ich babbel Hessisch.
Isch schwaetz Schwaebisch.
I red Boarisch.

Haben die Deutsche Dialekte ihre eigene Rechtschreibungen?

Die Dialekte werden normalerweise nicht geschrieben.
Mitunter findet man Texte, die in einem Dialekt geschrieben sind. Die Schreibung ist aber nicht verbindlich festgelegt, und es ist so ungewohnt Dialekt zu lesen, da

Die Dialekte werden normalerweise nicht geschrieben.
Mitunter findet man Texte, die in einem Dialekt geschrieben sind. Die Schreibung ist aber nicht verbindlich festgelegt, und es ist so ungewohnt Dialekt zu lesen, da

Sorry for the double post!

Hans-Peter Boer, Niewweltieden, 317 pages, ISBN 3-402-06109-0

The whole book is written in [b]M

Of course you can find books written in nearly any dialect. But each author defines his own orthography.
And I think that quite a number of those books is bought to make "funny" presents and is never read by the people who receive them.

Thanks for the information through reading the posts one more question came to my mind - if for everyone hochdeutsch is not a native language then everybody speaks it with accent(is it possible to feel that a person isnt from your area even if you speak a litarary languae?), what pronouciation is the literal one? those who live in Hamburg?

[quote]"Dat magg nu so teihn Jaor tr

Oi doo berleev thee bee roight.

Sorry - that's an awful attempt.

[quote=Jasper May][quote]"Dat magg nu so teihn Jaor tr

Ich kann den Text auf Plattdeutsch nicht verstehen, erst nach mehrmaligem Lesen ist mir der sinn so einigerma

Originally Posted by Старик

pronounciation.

Pronunciation baby, pronunciation. Pronunciation is pronounced pro, nun, see, a, shon.

[quote=Anonymous]Ich kann den Text auf Plattdeutsch nicht verstehen, erst nach mehrmaligem Lesen ist mir der sinn so einigerma

now that was a simplification really, to be more precise Tiedken = Tied (Zeit) + ken (diminutive suffix) "времячко" (время + чко)

@vending: du kannst doch gut Deutsch oder nicht?
Kannst du dann diesen satz dann bitte nocheinmal auf Hochdeutsch sagen?
Das was du dazu in Englsich dazu geschrieben hast verstehe ich n

People always forget "South Tyrol"
It's in north italy and we speak a german dialect there..if german people come to south tyrol they understand nearly nothing...and the funny thing is that we also use italian words..so it's quite hard to understand us.

For example
I hon (Ich habe)
Du hosch (Du hast)
Er/sie('se' too)/ess hot (Er, sie es hat)
Mir hom (Wir haben)
Es hops (Ihr habt)
Sie/Se hom (Sie haben)

You can see it's very different!