In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Holger MEtzger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Am 24.03.2002 16:37 Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T. schrieb: >> Your correct! >> >> Like I said I've forgotten the the spelling. >> >> Basically, it was supposed to say "I don't speak German", or don't speak >> German, or "can't speak German" something the neighborhood. >> >> Doesn't the two words together (sprechen deutsche) above mean something >> like : DO you Speak German? >> >> My friend wife notes there are two versions (dialects) of German, >> regular German, and High German. That, there some words in each version, >> that are not in the other. And that pronounciation can be different. And >> that Austria tend to use one version while, Germany tends to use the >> other, although they both know each version and can speak them as needed. > ><histoy lesson> > >Austrians use different words, but a German should understand them, in a >written form anyways... :-) >German consists of so many different dialects it's hard for a German >form the North to understand a Bavarian, and vice versa, if they do not >speak "High German".
Right on. During a visit with relatives in northern Bavaria I happened to catch a TV show in which someone speaking "Platt Deutsch" was being interviewed. I couldn't for the life of me understand a thing being said. Something that is very striking is that German spoken in the far north seems to have similar vowel annunciation to British English. Different language, different rules and words, but similar vowel annunciations. Bizarre. The dialect phenomenon seems to afflict all languages. A friend who travelled to Scotland on a business trip needed to have someone from the British office act as translator to understand the Scots! :-) >The German spoken in Switzerland is even harder to >understand. But also here in the region where I live people that live 5 >kilometres away speak differently already. Quite true in Mittelfranken as well. Regards, Peter Stein