Do you reckon the people in say Berlin or Munich say that? Sounds a little like th eold fashioned "received pronunciation" Oxford English
Munich doesn't matter Leo They all speak like Franz Beckenbauer - totally unintelligable to anyone else. The Berlin accent sounds a little rough, but is understandable. The Kolsch dialect spoken in Cologne is like a German equivalent of Scouse. The High German which is taught in schools is most similar to that spoken in Hannover, and can be easily understood by any other German speaker. Hamburg does have an accent, but not many actually use it (in contrast to Cologne). The most horrific sounding accent is from Dresden and Leipzig (Thuringia and Saxony). Swiss German is interesting. When written it is the same as high German, but when it is spoken (ie. in films) the Germans need subtitles to understand it, though they can speak high German as well.
Seems a bit like UK then - Irish, Scottish, Geordie, Scouse etc all can be hard to understand from another region. It is Estuary English I hate most (Brummie a narrow second) and the current vogue of deliberately not sounding the letter t in words like "sentence" - thus "sen ence". Couple that with the recent use of starting every sentence with "so" (seems to have been imported from America)
I remember when Paul Lambert was our manager, I never understood his post-match interviews, they may as well have been in Gaelic!
I actually like the survival of regional accents Leo. Geordie English actually has words of Danish origins. The English spoken in Somerset (at least by the locals) stems from old West Saxon English. I agree that some dialects sound nicer than others. Ideally people would retain their regional dialects but also be able to speak an English which is intelligable to foreigners. If you learn German at school (in England) and then come to Germany then you will have little problem in Hannover, but in Cologne (or Vienna) it would probably be different - but, as a foreigner, you are not duty bound to learn every dialect, and so the responsibility lies with them to make themselves understandable.
When I was at University, there was a definite difference between the accent in the valleys and in Cardiff. There is a Jersey accent but it's heard very rarely as there are very few "true" Jersey people remaining but having heard it, I can do a reasonable impersonation of it, but there is no situation where it is necessary.
Could it be that he picked up on some jargon specific to where you live? To many ears, the Australian accent applies to all Aussies, but most Aussies can at the very least identify which State visitors are from by listening to the accent - and those who have travelled Australia a lot can pinpoint towns from the jargon. In 1981, I attended an England V Australia Test Match at Lords (the only one in the series that didn't end with a result) - on one of the days, I sat in front of a group of Aussie tourists. After listening to their banter for about 5 minutes, I had pinpointed where they were from - their accent told me NSW, and their jargon told me Newcastle. They were dumbfounded when I turned around, introduced myself and asked which part of Newcastle they were from.
Totally agree Cologne. Geordie accent is brilliant - and I happen to like both Scouse and Mancunian with words like kekkle instead of kettle. Similarly East Anglian, Cornish etc. I just happened to pick up on Brummie and Estuary as two I do not like. My daughter moved to Nottingham last year and already my grandaughter is mispronounicing proper English words like grass (grarss) as graas.
Oi - my sister has lived there since the mid seventies and she sounds nothing like Beckenbauer. Her husband is a local and sounds just the same as she does - or maybe it's because I can't speak a word of German that I can't identify a difference...
I think that since I have lived here my neighbour Bernard who I talk to may have passed on some of the local lingo to me. His daughter when she comes down from Paris tells me I shouldn't listen to him as he doesn't speak proper French. Slang or Patois I am not always sure, but Parisian French is easiest to understand, while down on the Med they tend to add things to the end of words that makes it difficult. Corsica has quite a lot of the people speaking their own language that is unlike anything else, but when speaking French they are quite easy to follow.
Same applies to Italian. Milan -Turin Italian is taught as a rule to foreign speakers and used on national television and radio. Thus it can be understood anywhere. The dialects around the country are different again from Rome to Lecce to Friuli and all points beyond and between. Italy is not an old nation its provinces are.
Hi there I am back now ... most documents saved and new disks in machine. That was a frightening week...... Lot of lessons: Back up everything on a separate disk and keep a back up elsewhere too Keep lists of passwords on paper copies not in your machine Record product keys again in the manner above Dont run your pc when it is acting up... sort it straight away.
Welcome back Yorkie - glad you manged to get it all sorted. All the points you mention are on my list of things I should do but..........
The irony is we were installing the new back up disk when my first disk burnt out I was stangely accepting of it all in a Buddhist sense as I could have lost everything from the last 22+ years.... Have done a few since recovery though
Evening all, it has been a busy day, painting for my daughter this morning and logging this afternoon. My fields look as if autumn is here with fallen leaves everywhere and some trees that have failed to make it through the drought. Oak really needs to be kept for at least a year before burning, but ash can be cut and burnt the same day.
