Since Patrik said he likes to learn some different POVs: Holger Metzger wrote:
> The thing is that High German is "artificial", it's maybe like > "Queen's english" in England... nobody really talks that way I have to disagree to some extend. Of course, nobody speaks 100% correct German. But I do think that most people and the people in TV in Germany nowadays speak something that is very close to "High German" (Hochdeutsch), so that I have no problem understanding anybody, unless it's some grandma from the very north or people from the very south like native Bavarians or Austrians. (I myself live near Frankfurt, which is in the middle.) In writing, we are even closer to "High German". I have no problem reading even Austrian websites, apart from some "strange" (for me) words used. This is very much unlike English, where you have stuff like color vs. colour, because nobody acknowledges any official and definite English. (Remembering a discussion with mpt, who at first refused to accept that there is something like a defining comittee for German.) For me, the notion that a communciation standard like a human language is left without standards body defining (and adjusting) it is strange. IMO, this has nothing to do with freedom, but it's like as if (for HTML) we denied any IETF or W3C and left everything over to market forces like Netscape and Microsoft. As an aside, I might point out that German (and French), unlike English, actually has some reasonable comma-setting rules, which allows to construct quite long sentences. There is still some ambiguity left, but less so than in English. The disadvantage is that this makes sentences (saying the same) longer, because you are not allowed to do shortcuts like "The one over there picking up the apple", but you have to say "The one over there*, who is* picking up the apple" - in German: "Der eine dort drüben, der den Apfel aufhebt". BTW: It's "Saboteur", not "Sabotuer".
