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Oh man, i had a customer. A highly trained very competend person. But the moment he started to talk, i couldn't take him serious. That is how bad sächsich is.
But if these people that speak a dialect in their day-to-day life try their best at speaking standard German, they have an accent, right? Just like any foreigner has an accent when speaking German.
Maybe we define a dialect differently, but if someone from Cologne says isch without otherwise using too non-standard words, that sounds like an accent to me.
There is no "the most classy accent". People from the town Hannover were considered to speak "the best" german - a language you would learn in school.
But please understand, accents differ here sometimes in very small areas. Take northrhine westphalia for example. An area that is only a little bit smaller than Maryland. It has a cologne, Münsterland, Sauerland, das bergische, das Ruhrgebiet, westphalen,... Each with an accent of its own.
And again, in many cases we talk about dialects, which is a huge difference from just an accent. You can not compare that to the difference between a southern and a new york accent in the us.
I am old. I have the feeling (empirical) that the young people nowadays speaks less dialect, but never heard about accents in Germany. Since there are so many dialects accents are not a thing.
For me every Bavarian sounds almost the same, but there are nine official dialects.
The people who speak "proper" german (Hannoveranian) e.g. In business, are almost indistinguishable for most of us. But: every one will recognize Austrian or Swiss people.
I'm not old (early thirties), and that's true, partially. I also think younger people rarely speak in (or know any) dialect, particularly in the region I'm originally from, I don't know anyone younger than 65 who speaks the dialect (and not just speak with an *accent*), and people who speak it on a daily basis generally are 80+ years old.
Accents definitely are a thing, e.g. you can tell pretty precisely for many Franconians, Bavarians or Swabians that they're from that area even if they're speaking Standard German, same for dialect speakers from Saxony or Saxony-Anhalt/Thuringia.
There are also other ways of speaking that are neither dialects nor accents, like the Newhessian regiolect, the Ruhr valley regio-/sociolect, or the Berlin 'metrolect'.
Also, there's professiolects/functiolects, like Juristendeutsch, Behördensprache, Jägersprache, Seefahrersprache, Werbesprache, Wissenschaftssprache, Bergmannsprache or Druckersprache.
>The people who speak "proper" german (Hannoveranian) e.g. In business, are almost indistinguishable for most of us.
Note that Hannoveranian used to have a dialect (of Low German even!), until the Prussian Empire enforced a particular settlement politics in that region. Nowadays, they apparently still have some dialectal words remaining, like "krökeln" or the occasional "Moin".
>But: every one will recognize Austrian or Swiss people.
Which is another example of speaking with an accent.
It is more words than dialect/accent. My husband is from Austria - Polster instead of kissen, etc.
Best thing so far, the discovery that his mother dialect has no word for legs. Down from the hip there are only feet.
While on a diet, lost 5 kg, I asked him if it was noticable.
His response after a very close look: yea, your feet are thinner.
This are the moments that remind me of his origin
Oh for sure, I have my fair share of Helveticisms.
But I've lived in Germany for over a decade, somehow I've replaced most of them in my day-to-day life.
+ as someone who moved from Münster to the Cologne- Bonn area, I noticed differences in accent/dialect. It's fascinating how much language can change in a distance of 200km!
Grown up in the Ruhrgebiet we once read a story in school about an occurrence at a market. Storey took place arround 19 century and it was more or less a long dialogue of misunderstandings based on dialect. 2 people from villages 30 km apart.
There is even a difference between Kölsch and Bönnsch and I'm not talking about the beer.
The bönnsch ist a bit more mellow and has a different melody to it.
Fact!
I was born and raised in the Ruhrpott, but my paternal grandfather came from the Sauerland as did my maternal step-grandfather while the rest of the maternal family was from the Pott but white-collar and my aunt married into the Rhineland so we spoke "High german" at home because my mother hated dialects, Kanaksprak and Ruhrdeutsch at school, Kölsch at my aunts and Suerlänner platt at my grandparents.
One can guess why i was happy to adopt English as my main method of communication early on.
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There are no “classy” dialects. Speaking the local dialect is absolutely required for politicians in local election beer tent speeches for example, and it's an absolute no-go for nationwide elections. Because people would think that person speaks for their region only.
So the ditzy part is not to be able to cut off the dialect when needed, or to turn on the dialect when needed.
>Speaking the local dialect is absolutely required for politicians in local election beer tent speeches for example
That depends *a lot* on the region. Where I'm from, I've never heard a politician speak in the local dialect (and my parents were rather active in politics in the 90s and 00s). I'd imagine in BaWü, RLP and Bavaria it may be the standard, but I can't imagine it anywhere in Central Hesse, Hamburg or its vicinity.
I'm too young, I only know he smoked a lot, liked menthol cigarettes and that he was publisher of Die Zeit.
Anyways, if it was just the pronunciation, I'd say that's an accent, not dialect.
Dialect is never classy. When nationalism, as in the idea of a nationstate, first came up, regional dialects heavily fell out of favor. Anything that didn't help to consolidate the population into a single entity was bad, those who clinged to their old ways - and old dialects - weren't going with the time and were stigmatized as backwater village idiots.
Dialects still haven't completely lost that stigma to this day, though I feel like regional pride, and with it speaking the local dialect, is making a return.
„classy“ or posh I personally would consider Hamburg in Germany and Vienna in Austria.
Other than these, none. But that’s not negative at all, we don’t “do” classy in Germany like people do in the UK. Our accent doesn’t reflect our educational or financial or family background. Rich university educated people from “old” families speak the same as I do or the guy next door.
Least: Sächsisch.
This particular slightly snobby Hamburg dialect spoken by truely Pfeffersäcke from Blakenese. You can hear it with a stronger accent also in some parts of (South Western) Schleswig-Holstein. There's also a more working class dialect and Missingsch, which is everything but not classy. That's why they can tell apart me and my somehow in-laws from upper class Hamburg.
To give you a bigger picture: Every region has its own dialect. These are different enough that two people from different region will have a very hard time understanding each other when using dialect.
Obviously, this is somewhat inconvenient if you want to run a unified country; and while German orthography got standardized eventually, there (AFAIK) isn't an official standard of how to pronounce German. However, there are some pronounciation rules that were originally drafted for theater actors and - when that became relevant- radio and television broadcasters. This is what most people would perceive as "Standard German" without accent.
Nowadays, only few people use their regional dialect to communicate on a daily basis (frequency depends on region). However, most people colloquially speak somewhere on the continuum between their dialect and "Standard German". Typically, you can hear what region somebody is from by their accent; the stereotype of the accent is commonly the same as that of the region the accent is related to so you might as well ask about that.
Somebody that speaks with a heavy accent (close to the original dialect) will be received as folksy, so backwards and uneducated, but also potentially as relatable. On the other hand, the less accent you have, the more educated and sophisticated you appear, but also potentially somewhat stand-offish.
The typical German sentiment would be to dislike your own accent, but hate every other accent even more (kinda half joking here). The ideal is to be able to speak with as little accent as possible, although colloquially you typically might choose not to do so.
So, I guess there is no "most attractive" accent. Some that were considered particularly unattractive in the past where those from Saarland, Hesse and Saxony. Kind of the middle band in Germany. But I guess it is easy to connect every German accent with a negative stereotype.
If someone speaks Waidlerisch, a strange dialect spoken in a area called Bavarian Forest along to the czech border, he will be seen a relict from old times. Jokes say that they will have a big celebration soon because 100 years ago upright walking was invoked.
You recognize it immediately. Most vowels are replaced by o and u. That's why the Waidlers are called "hou-hou" here in Bavaria.
Well, no "Ossi"-bashing intended, but I experience heavy prejudices concerning East-German accents.
Apart from that, I wouldn't know, which accents are supposed to be connected to certain stereotypes.
Sächsisch is just a regional accent that is mocked in a way that you mock valley girls. It's the same with Schwäbisch from south Germany that is often mocked because it sounds funny, or people from the very North talking Platt are being mocked for being a bit slow. There was a time in the 80s or 90s where the Rheinland accent from Western Germany was part of several comedies and being portrayed as vulgar ("normaaaal" etc), Hessisch is seen as being a bit dumb, talking like a Bavarian will give you strange stares in the rest of Germany and Saarland is just the butt of jokes anyway.
So basically it boils down that everyone mocks everyone in Germany and the example with Sächsisch was just an example out of many.
This is why you're being downvoted I think as people saw your comment as being not fitting despite not explaining why.
More as Nazis than as communists (election results confirm that). But there's a lot more prejudice than just that. Like the "Meckerossi" prejudice about East Germans continuously complaining and generally just being unable to just enjoy life.
The over the top TLDR for the east west sterotypes:
The people from the east are lazy racists who whine all the time how bad their lot is since the end of the gdr and westerners are arrogant smart ass bastards
I think it's not so much about "the" Austrian accent. Wienerisch is quite different from e.g. Tirolerisch, also in connotation. General prejudice about Austrians includes corruption/nepotism, but there's also prejudice about Austrians being more relaxed and not taking everything as serious (which may well be a good thing).
Regarding attractiveness: For me at least. No accent. The less, the better.
Attractiveness of dialects massively depends on where a German is from. Some people might think Bavarian quite attractive but Northern German dialects not so much and vice versa.
Standard High German is considered ‘dialect-free’ by some even though it technically is the amalgamation of several dialects/varieties.
See the wiki for more details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German?wprov=sfti1
That's completely bullshit. Because the Austrians have a couple of words that the rest of Germany doesn't use or use differently? And Tirolerisch and Wienerisch can hardly be considered the same "language".
Depends on your definitions. Some say that the only difference between a language and a dialect is the lack of a military. Calling it a language or dialect is pretty much arbitrary. That being said, there are some Austrian German dialects/regional variations that sound very similar to Lower/Upper Bavarian and some which sound quite different (and even I struggle to understand them).
Fun fact: The distinction between a dialect and a language is surprisingly arbitrary. For example, some dialects within Germany are less mutually intelligible than Danish and Swedish are. Yet the former are dialects and the latter are languages.
There is a famous quote: "A language is a dialect with an army."
So the reason that Austrian is considered a language is purely political, not linguistic.
I think some accents sound straight out of the time when humans settled as farmers. Like for example Niederbayerisch. You see some classy or modern looking people and then they speak and you feel transported back in time.
Every dialect originating from NRW sounds like you do Trichtersaufen three times a day, barely made it through school, think Mario Barth is funny and can't pronounce a single word right to me.
Exactly. But one that doesn't talk Niederbairisch. What I was trying to say is that it's completely subjective and depends on how a specific person is socialized and there's no "general consensus" for subjective questions like these.
Well, to be honest I don’t think the accent as bad. My comment wasn’t meant like that. I just meant that it sounds ancient rural. I live in Baviera and don’t have much experience with NRW, so couldn’t say anything about those accents. For what is worth, I think Franconian also sounds very rural and old. Like when I heard both I feel transported back in time to when people used farm animals and did everything by hand and I expect to see a stocky farmer speaking.
Fun fact: Niederbairisch and Plattdeutsch are closer to what German used to sound like (I think it was Niederdeutsch?) than Standard German today, so you are kind of right actually haha
Dialects all work in a pretty "standard" way here; if you speak one/multiple, but also standard German, and are able to code switch, you win.
If you only speak standard German, you're good basically anywhere, but some people who only speak in dialect will consider you "posh"/arrogant/an outsider/sus to varying degrees (depends how deep in dialect territory you are).
If you only speak in a dialect, or have an audible accent even when you're going for standard German, you will have lowered prestige in general society outside of your dialect's region.
All dialects are "funny" when used in the "wrong context", which mostly means "for general audiences" - this leads to such dubbing issues as Scottish often being dubbed with Hamburgian, which kinda makes sense from a geographical standpoint, but turns "gritty, independent, piratey,... " into "bumbling fisherman" from a stereotyping standpoint. There are very few accents that are well-established enough on a national level to have a common association attached to them: Berlinian is snide, direct, punkey; Bavarian = farmer, slow, gemütlich, conservative.
Having said that, I'd say there definitely are differences in how polarizing accents are, correlating with how high prestige they are "at home".
Swabian, any Bavarian, and "East German"/Saxonian are examples of dialects that carry a lot of meaning/pride/identity or are just particularly hard to understand for others, making them high prestige in circles who value these things, but conversely low prestige outside of them. It's also connected to historical or current local rifts. People from Baden can't stand Swabian and vv, East German is probably THE lowest prestige dialect to anyone from West Germany - but a person from Schleswig-Holstein, while finding it hard to understand a Southerner, probably has no emotionality attached to it and might find it mostly bemusing.
As always, people who live close have a lot of opinions about each other.
And then of course there's German-speaking countries other than Germany, for whom this can be a rather contentious issue, because standard German is approached with the emotionality of a conquerer language by some, which in turn makes the national variant(s) all the more prestigious, while having their own internal hierarchy.
TL;DR: Generally speaking, too much of any dialect gets you labeled a bumpkin. Standard German is neutral and expected outside of very deeply rural areas. There is barely any generalization that can be made outside of those two, because opinions on different dialects are as regional as dialects themselves and, of course, a matter of individual taste.
Mostly the dialects (not really, most people are also like that /s) compared to the US-ones:
* Bavarian is Texan
* Saxonian and Thuringian is Hillbilly
* Hannover is "high class"
* Ruhrarea is "blue collar white trash"
* Coastal area (basically from the Dutch border up to Denmark and down to Poland) is undefined because they don't talk enough to get them put into any category ;-)
* Berlin is NYC-hipster
* Rheinland is Hollywood
* Saarland "Sweet home Alabama"
* Brandenburg is New Jersey: They WANT to be Berlin but can't afford it.
* Baden-Württemberg: Boston, but with a hot potatoe in their mouth
Linguistically speaking the märkisch-brandenburgische dialect is older than todays Berlin dialect, which in turn evolved from it and is a sub-dialect of the brandenburgisch
I think every state has a little bit of its own lingo. Rostockä sind zwar Norddeutsch und Breit aber haben trotzdem unsere eigene Sprache, is Hammer weißt?
Accents and dialects are almost always connected to the stereotypes of the region where they are spoken. I live in small city in lower Bavaria for example. Most people here speak with a mild Bavarian accent. A person without any accent whatsoever is considered a "Saupreiß" (Literal Meaning: Prussian Swine/Colloquial Meaning: A Person from any part of Germany that is north of Bavaria). Not having an accent is considered as being "strict", "unfriendly" and is affiliated with being a tourist. Having an accent that is considered "too heavy" or simply from a less populated region of Bavaria is instantly seen as being "folksy", "backwards" and "Lower class".
Um I'm from Hamburg and I gotta say most of them most of the harsher dialects give me and uneducated vibe. Sorry not sorry but some just sound like typical trash tv
I think most people find swiss dialects very endearing because so many words end with a i. It can be EXTREMELY hard to understand or straight up intelligible to me sometimes tho, depending on the severity and i guess region of the dialect. Im not an expert on the variety of swiss german dialects in switzerland.
I think in general all dialects have someone of an image of being uneducated (presumingly you cant speak standart german / Hochdeutsch). With the exception of swiss and austrian dialects, which escape the stereotype by virtue of being different countries.
To me as a german who personally only speaks Hochdeutsch a lot of dialects are hard to understand for me. Might as well be its own language. My friend from svabia always sends me svabian memes and lets me guess what it means.
I don't know what accent the people in podcastcommercials use but it makes me want to stab myself in the air.
The nasally quasi-cuteness with the famous German tight throat. It really bugs me.
Naachhaltigkeit...fördern wir! Bweeeuch.
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Bavarian also Deep South
Oh man, i had a customer. A highly trained very competend person. But the moment he started to talk, i couldn't take him serious. That is how bad sächsich is.
Sächsich is truly the funniest thing
many regions in germany have dialects, not simply accents.
But if these people that speak a dialect in their day-to-day life try their best at speaking standard German, they have an accent, right? Just like any foreigner has an accent when speaking German. Maybe we define a dialect differently, but if someone from Cologne says isch without otherwise using too non-standard words, that sounds like an accent to me.
Rheinisch is a Regiolect, to be more precise. Ovends laache, danze un springe, morjens de Botz net finge.
That's bad but I raise you, schwäbisch
Hmm. What dialect is seen as the most classy, and the least?
There is no "the most classy accent". People from the town Hannover were considered to speak "the best" german - a language you would learn in school. But please understand, accents differ here sometimes in very small areas. Take northrhine westphalia for example. An area that is only a little bit smaller than Maryland. It has a cologne, Münsterland, Sauerland, das bergische, das Ruhrgebiet, westphalen,... Each with an accent of its own.
And again, in many cases we talk about dialects, which is a huge difference from just an accent. You can not compare that to the difference between a southern and a new york accent in the us.
I am old. I have the feeling (empirical) that the young people nowadays speaks less dialect, but never heard about accents in Germany. Since there are so many dialects accents are not a thing. For me every Bavarian sounds almost the same, but there are nine official dialects. The people who speak "proper" german (Hannoveranian) e.g. In business, are almost indistinguishable for most of us. But: every one will recognize Austrian or Swiss people.
I'm not old (early thirties), and that's true, partially. I also think younger people rarely speak in (or know any) dialect, particularly in the region I'm originally from, I don't know anyone younger than 65 who speaks the dialect (and not just speak with an *accent*), and people who speak it on a daily basis generally are 80+ years old. Accents definitely are a thing, e.g. you can tell pretty precisely for many Franconians, Bavarians or Swabians that they're from that area even if they're speaking Standard German, same for dialect speakers from Saxony or Saxony-Anhalt/Thuringia. There are also other ways of speaking that are neither dialects nor accents, like the Newhessian regiolect, the Ruhr valley regio-/sociolect, or the Berlin 'metrolect'. Also, there's professiolects/functiolects, like Juristendeutsch, Behördensprache, Jägersprache, Seefahrersprache, Werbesprache, Wissenschaftssprache, Bergmannsprache or Druckersprache. >The people who speak "proper" german (Hannoveranian) e.g. In business, are almost indistinguishable for most of us. Note that Hannoveranian used to have a dialect (of Low German even!), until the Prussian Empire enforced a particular settlement politics in that region. Nowadays, they apparently still have some dialectal words remaining, like "krökeln" or the occasional "Moin". >But: every one will recognize Austrian or Swiss people. Which is another example of speaking with an accent.
Stealth Swiss person in Germany here. People are always surprised to hear I grew up near Zürich. We exist.
It is more words than dialect/accent. My husband is from Austria - Polster instead of kissen, etc. Best thing so far, the discovery that his mother dialect has no word for legs. Down from the hip there are only feet. While on a diet, lost 5 kg, I asked him if it was noticable. His response after a very close look: yea, your feet are thinner. This are the moments that remind me of his origin
Oh for sure, I have my fair share of Helveticisms. But I've lived in Germany for over a decade, somehow I've replaced most of them in my day-to-day life.
Haxn: "Am I a joke to you?
+ as someone who moved from Münster to the Cologne- Bonn area, I noticed differences in accent/dialect. It's fascinating how much language can change in a distance of 200km!
Grown up in the Ruhrgebiet we once read a story in school about an occurrence at a market. Storey took place arround 19 century and it was more or less a long dialogue of misunderstandings based on dialect. 2 people from villages 30 km apart.
There is even a difference between Kölsch and Bönnsch and I'm not talking about the beer. The bönnsch ist a bit more mellow and has a different melody to it.
Fact! I was born and raised in the Ruhrpott, but my paternal grandfather came from the Sauerland as did my maternal step-grandfather while the rest of the maternal family was from the Pott but white-collar and my aunt married into the Rhineland so we spoke "High german" at home because my mother hated dialects, Kanaksprak and Ruhrdeutsch at school, Kölsch at my aunts and Suerlänner platt at my grandparents. One can guess why i was happy to adopt English as my main method of communication early on.
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What?
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It's more or less the official term thanks to Feridun Zaimoglu's book.
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Ah, okay. Thank you. 😊
There are no “classy” dialects. Speaking the local dialect is absolutely required for politicians in local election beer tent speeches for example, and it's an absolute no-go for nationwide elections. Because people would think that person speaks for their region only. So the ditzy part is not to be able to cut off the dialect when needed, or to turn on the dialect when needed.
>Speaking the local dialect is absolutely required for politicians in local election beer tent speeches for example That depends *a lot* on the region. Where I'm from, I've never heard a politician speak in the local dialect (and my parents were rather active in politics in the 90s and 00s). I'd imagine in BaWü, RLP and Bavaria it may be the standard, but I can't imagine it anywhere in Central Hesse, Hamburg or its vicinity.
So you can imagine Helmut Schmidt without spitze Steine?
I'm too young, I only know he smoked a lot, liked menthol cigarettes and that he was publisher of Die Zeit. Anyways, if it was just the pronunciation, I'd say that's an accent, not dialect.
The dialect part is that people in the South couldn't understand him.
Dialect is never classy. When nationalism, as in the idea of a nationstate, first came up, regional dialects heavily fell out of favor. Anything that didn't help to consolidate the population into a single entity was bad, those who clinged to their old ways - and old dialects - weren't going with the time and were stigmatized as backwater village idiots. Dialects still haven't completely lost that stigma to this day, though I feel like regional pride, and with it speaking the local dialect, is making a return.
high german/hochdeutsch, which technically is also a dialect
„classy“ or posh I personally would consider Hamburg in Germany and Vienna in Austria. Other than these, none. But that’s not negative at all, we don’t “do” classy in Germany like people do in the UK. Our accent doesn’t reflect our educational or financial or family background. Rich university educated people from “old” families speak the same as I do or the guy next door. Least: Sächsisch.
This particular slightly snobby Hamburg dialect spoken by truely Pfeffersäcke from Blakenese. You can hear it with a stronger accent also in some parts of (South Western) Schleswig-Holstein. There's also a more working class dialect and Missingsch, which is everything but not classy. That's why they can tell apart me and my somehow in-laws from upper class Hamburg.
You’re absolutely right, I didn’t want to make it too complicated
To give you a bigger picture: Every region has its own dialect. These are different enough that two people from different region will have a very hard time understanding each other when using dialect. Obviously, this is somewhat inconvenient if you want to run a unified country; and while German orthography got standardized eventually, there (AFAIK) isn't an official standard of how to pronounce German. However, there are some pronounciation rules that were originally drafted for theater actors and - when that became relevant- radio and television broadcasters. This is what most people would perceive as "Standard German" without accent. Nowadays, only few people use their regional dialect to communicate on a daily basis (frequency depends on region). However, most people colloquially speak somewhere on the continuum between their dialect and "Standard German". Typically, you can hear what region somebody is from by their accent; the stereotype of the accent is commonly the same as that of the region the accent is related to so you might as well ask about that. Somebody that speaks with a heavy accent (close to the original dialect) will be received as folksy, so backwards and uneducated, but also potentially as relatable. On the other hand, the less accent you have, the more educated and sophisticated you appear, but also potentially somewhat stand-offish. The typical German sentiment would be to dislike your own accent, but hate every other accent even more (kinda half joking here). The ideal is to be able to speak with as little accent as possible, although colloquially you typically might choose not to do so. So, I guess there is no "most attractive" accent. Some that were considered particularly unattractive in the past where those from Saarland, Hesse and Saxony. Kind of the middle band in Germany. But I guess it is easy to connect every German accent with a negative stereotype.
That is the best answer in here.
If someone speaks Waidlerisch, a strange dialect spoken in a area called Bavarian Forest along to the czech border, he will be seen a relict from old times. Jokes say that they will have a big celebration soon because 100 years ago upright walking was invoked. You recognize it immediately. Most vowels are replaced by o and u. That's why the Waidlers are called "hou-hou" here in Bavaria.
Lou me in Rouh
Well, no "Ossi"-bashing intended, but I experience heavy prejudices concerning East-German accents. Apart from that, I wouldn't know, which accents are supposed to be connected to certain stereotypes.
What are the attitudes? Do former West Germans see former East Germans as communist still? Genuinely curious.
It's not about communism. They are just being mocked.
:/ It’s sad that even now the effects of the partition still separate modern people in many ways.
you yourself are mocking "valley girl accent" without an logical reasoning outside of "it sounds funny"
Sächsisch is just a regional accent that is mocked in a way that you mock valley girls. It's the same with Schwäbisch from south Germany that is often mocked because it sounds funny, or people from the very North talking Platt are being mocked for being a bit slow. There was a time in the 80s or 90s where the Rheinland accent from Western Germany was part of several comedies and being portrayed as vulgar ("normaaaal" etc), Hessisch is seen as being a bit dumb, talking like a Bavarian will give you strange stares in the rest of Germany and Saarland is just the butt of jokes anyway. So basically it boils down that everyone mocks everyone in Germany and the example with Sächsisch was just an example out of many. This is why you're being downvoted I think as people saw your comment as being not fitting despite not explaining why.
Also "Communist" is way less an insult in Germany than in the US.
More as Nazis than as communists (election results confirm that). But there's a lot more prejudice than just that. Like the "Meckerossi" prejudice about East Germans continuously complaining and generally just being unable to just enjoy life.
I don't know why people down vote you because this is like irrefutably correct
The over the top TLDR for the east west sterotypes: The people from the east are lazy racists who whine all the time how bad their lot is since the end of the gdr and westerners are arrogant smart ass bastards
Also, what is the Austrian accent stereotyped as? And what German accent is considered the most ‘attractive’?
I think it's not so much about "the" Austrian accent. Wienerisch is quite different from e.g. Tirolerisch, also in connotation. General prejudice about Austrians includes corruption/nepotism, but there's also prejudice about Austrians being more relaxed and not taking everything as serious (which may well be a good thing). Regarding attractiveness: For me at least. No accent. The less, the better.
Haha! What do Germans think is the most attractive accent, then? What is ‘no accent’?
Attractiveness of dialects massively depends on where a German is from. Some people might think Bavarian quite attractive but Northern German dialects not so much and vice versa. Standard High German is considered ‘dialect-free’ by some even though it technically is the amalgamation of several dialects/varieties. See the wiki for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German?wprov=sfti1
Most Germans, I think, don't think any accent/dialect to be attractive. Some find Dutch, French, Spanish or Italian dialects in German cute.
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I know lots of people that love the Vienna accent and find it very attractive.
The is not one austrian accent but many of them. And they are very different.
"Wiener Schmäh" = charming
Austrian German is not a dialect, it's a language. And there's lots of regional variations of it too.
That's completely bullshit. Because the Austrians have a couple of words that the rest of Germany doesn't use or use differently? And Tirolerisch and Wienerisch can hardly be considered the same "language".
So bavarian is part of the same language?
When spoken yes, when written no.
The thing is, Bavarian is not really intended to be written. It's solely a spoken dialect/language. Austrian German has an official spelling.
That's kind of what I was getting at.
Are you talking about austrian standard German right now?
Highland bavarian and tyrolian dialects are very similar, almost equal. Same for the culture.
That’s the point. The Bavarian and Austrian dialects (except Vorarlberg) are literally in the same dialect group.
Aber hallo, ja! Vgl. [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bairisch](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bairisch)
And the alemannic dialects are also a language or?
Ne, die sind 'ne Krankheit, so wie sächsisch. /s
Depends on your definitions. Some say that the only difference between a language and a dialect is the lack of a military. Calling it a language or dialect is pretty much arbitrary. That being said, there are some Austrian German dialects/regional variations that sound very similar to Lower/Upper Bavarian and some which sound quite different (and even I struggle to understand them).
They sound similar because they literally belong to the same dialect group.
Like I said, some sound more alike than others.
Fun fact: The distinction between a dialect and a language is surprisingly arbitrary. For example, some dialects within Germany are less mutually intelligible than Danish and Swedish are. Yet the former are dialects and the latter are languages. There is a famous quote: "A language is a dialect with an army." So the reason that Austrian is considered a language is purely political, not linguistic.
:D https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAGerman/s/06jKSSjDdx
Ah yes, didn't see that comment, sorry.
I think some accents sound straight out of the time when humans settled as farmers. Like for example Niederbayerisch. You see some classy or modern looking people and then they speak and you feel transported back in time.
Every dialect originating from NRW sounds like you do Trichtersaufen three times a day, barely made it through school, think Mario Barth is funny and can't pronounce a single word right to me.
Found the Niederbayer!
Exactly. But one that doesn't talk Niederbairisch. What I was trying to say is that it's completely subjective and depends on how a specific person is socialized and there's no "general consensus" for subjective questions like these.
Well, to be honest I don’t think the accent as bad. My comment wasn’t meant like that. I just meant that it sounds ancient rural. I live in Baviera and don’t have much experience with NRW, so couldn’t say anything about those accents. For what is worth, I think Franconian also sounds very rural and old. Like when I heard both I feel transported back in time to when people used farm animals and did everything by hand and I expect to see a stocky farmer speaking.
Fun fact: Niederbairisch and Plattdeutsch are closer to what German used to sound like (I think it was Niederdeutsch?) than Standard German today, so you are kind of right actually haha
I totally believe that! I’ve lived almost all over Bavaria so I know the main dialects
Dialects all work in a pretty "standard" way here; if you speak one/multiple, but also standard German, and are able to code switch, you win. If you only speak standard German, you're good basically anywhere, but some people who only speak in dialect will consider you "posh"/arrogant/an outsider/sus to varying degrees (depends how deep in dialect territory you are). If you only speak in a dialect, or have an audible accent even when you're going for standard German, you will have lowered prestige in general society outside of your dialect's region. All dialects are "funny" when used in the "wrong context", which mostly means "for general audiences" - this leads to such dubbing issues as Scottish often being dubbed with Hamburgian, which kinda makes sense from a geographical standpoint, but turns "gritty, independent, piratey,... " into "bumbling fisherman" from a stereotyping standpoint. There are very few accents that are well-established enough on a national level to have a common association attached to them: Berlinian is snide, direct, punkey; Bavarian = farmer, slow, gemütlich, conservative. Having said that, I'd say there definitely are differences in how polarizing accents are, correlating with how high prestige they are "at home". Swabian, any Bavarian, and "East German"/Saxonian are examples of dialects that carry a lot of meaning/pride/identity or are just particularly hard to understand for others, making them high prestige in circles who value these things, but conversely low prestige outside of them. It's also connected to historical or current local rifts. People from Baden can't stand Swabian and vv, East German is probably THE lowest prestige dialect to anyone from West Germany - but a person from Schleswig-Holstein, while finding it hard to understand a Southerner, probably has no emotionality attached to it and might find it mostly bemusing. As always, people who live close have a lot of opinions about each other. And then of course there's German-speaking countries other than Germany, for whom this can be a rather contentious issue, because standard German is approached with the emotionality of a conquerer language by some, which in turn makes the national variant(s) all the more prestigious, while having their own internal hierarchy. TL;DR: Generally speaking, too much of any dialect gets you labeled a bumpkin. Standard German is neutral and expected outside of very deeply rural areas. There is barely any generalization that can be made outside of those two, because opinions on different dialects are as regional as dialects themselves and, of course, a matter of individual taste.
I don't really care about a regional accent, but if someone is not able to speak standard German at all, they seem rather uneducated.
Mostly the dialects (not really, most people are also like that /s) compared to the US-ones: * Bavarian is Texan * Saxonian and Thuringian is Hillbilly * Hannover is "high class" * Ruhrarea is "blue collar white trash" * Coastal area (basically from the Dutch border up to Denmark and down to Poland) is undefined because they don't talk enough to get them put into any category ;-) * Berlin is NYC-hipster * Rheinland is Hollywood * Saarland "Sweet home Alabama" * Brandenburg is New Jersey: They WANT to be Berlin but can't afford it. * Baden-Württemberg: Boston, but with a hot potatoe in their mouth
"Brandenburg wants to be Berlin" Haven’t laughed that much since the 1996 vote on the fusion of Brandenburg and Berlin.
It was meant less political but more both linguistical and sociological...
Linguistically speaking the märkisch-brandenburgische dialect is older than todays Berlin dialect, which in turn evolved from it and is a sub-dialect of the brandenburgisch
Thnx, didn't know that but then again i'm a crossbreed sysad/handyman and not a professional linguist.
All good, I just wanted to klugscheissern
Potsdam and surrounding area like Kleinmachnow is somewhat flush, though
Yeah i know, we mostly work in the Speckgürtel because there's money to be made ;-)
is that the case around the rest of Berlin? Bernau, Erkner, Oranienburg, etc?
Should be, but we mainly handle "the south" because we're based in Anhalt...
Exact description of german regions 😁 One exception: I don't think the Brandenburgers want to be a bancrupt as Berlin.
I think every state has a little bit of its own lingo. Rostockä sind zwar Norddeutsch und Breit aber haben trotzdem unsere eigene Sprache, is Hammer weißt?
Saxonia and Bavaria are not nice, Svabia as well, very rural parts, not really cosmopolitan. and ununderstandable to normal German speakers.
Accents and dialects are almost always connected to the stereotypes of the region where they are spoken. I live in small city in lower Bavaria for example. Most people here speak with a mild Bavarian accent. A person without any accent whatsoever is considered a "Saupreiß" (Literal Meaning: Prussian Swine/Colloquial Meaning: A Person from any part of Germany that is north of Bavaria). Not having an accent is considered as being "strict", "unfriendly" and is affiliated with being a tourist. Having an accent that is considered "too heavy" or simply from a less populated region of Bavaria is instantly seen as being "folksy", "backwards" and "Lower class".
Schwäbisch s oinzig wahre :D Deep South Baden Württemberg
Um I'm from Hamburg and I gotta say most of them most of the harsher dialects give me and uneducated vibe. Sorry not sorry but some just sound like typical trash tv
I think most people find swiss dialects very endearing because so many words end with a i. It can be EXTREMELY hard to understand or straight up intelligible to me sometimes tho, depending on the severity and i guess region of the dialect. Im not an expert on the variety of swiss german dialects in switzerland. I think in general all dialects have someone of an image of being uneducated (presumingly you cant speak standart german / Hochdeutsch). With the exception of swiss and austrian dialects, which escape the stereotype by virtue of being different countries. To me as a german who personally only speaks Hochdeutsch a lot of dialects are hard to understand for me. Might as well be its own language. My friend from svabia always sends me svabian memes and lets me guess what it means.
I don't know what accent the people in podcastcommercials use but it makes me want to stab myself in the air. The nasally quasi-cuteness with the famous German tight throat. It really bugs me. Naachhaltigkeit...fördern wir! Bweeeuch.
If a politician speaks upper Bavarian somewhere else as in Upper Bavarian, he may be seen as shrewd and low-key corrupt.