20-yr-old speaks 11 languages. How's his pronunciation in...

[John_fi_Skye]

No Gaelic, then.

[Hermit]

And don't get me started on Schwyzerdütsch...

As if Bavarian or Swabian wasn't bad enough. All of them are totally unintelligible, horrid sounding accents to me, even though German is my first language. As for the dialect spoken at the wasserkant, I began to understand what was being said when I learnt English at school.

[Audley Strange]

As if Bavarian or Swabian wasn't bad enough. All of them are totally unintelligible, horrid sounding accents to me, even though German is my first language. As for the dialect spoken at the wasserkant, I began to understand what was being said when I learnt English at school.

This might sound like an odd question but was Swabian a separate language at one point or is the dialect so distinct that it could have been mistaken for one? I'm asking because I'm writing something about the Hohenstaufen mob and got the impression that people from the surrounding regions considered it a "foreign tongue", but its a vague impression, I don't know if it was hyperbole, error or actually the case.

Any ideas?

[Hermit]

This might sound like an odd question but was Swabian a separate language at one point or is the dialect so distinct that it could have been mistaken for one? I'm asking because I'm writing something about the Hohenstaufen mob and got the impression that people from the surrounding regions considered it a "foreign tongue", but its a vague impression, I don't know if it was hyperbole, error or actually the case.

Any ideas?

It appears to be a dialect, but the issue is not clear cut. You may find the following links useful:

http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa051198.htm
http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa051898.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German

[Svartalf]

And don't get me started on Schwyzerdütsch...

As if Bavarian or Swabian wasn't bad enough. All of them are totally unintelligible, horrid sounding accents to me, even though German is my first language. As for the dialect spoken at the wasserkant, I began to understand what was being said when I learnt English at school.

Actually, SchwhyzerDeutsch IS the Southern part of Swabian... Once had a couple Swiss tourists next to me in a restaurant, and had to ask them where they were from because, while I could tell it was Germanic, I couldn't even pin it down to German. And even Austrians daub on the Perversion of German spoken by Bavarians.

Do I deduce correctly that you're either from the Rhineland, or from Northern Germany Hermit?

And Swabian is a dialect rather than a separate language, though within the German sphere, the distinction can be pretty academic, I don't know if somebody from Köln can effectively understand a Bavarian who doesn't tone down the accent and dialectal vocabulary to make himself understandable... Germany (including Switzerland and Austria) has a ramarkable variety of regional variants that work along a continuum... the Brothers Grimm studied that when they weren't busy collecting folktales, and I've seen very interesting maps of isoglosses and shifts that show how common pronounciation of certain features of the languages actually evolves along definite lines, roughly along a North/South axis

[leo-rcc]

Sure, blame the Dutch guy for answering the question.

Is Afrikaans THAT different from European Dutch?

Very much different. I can grasp most of it, but Afrikaans and Dutch have developed so far in different directions that it is pretty hard to follow.

I always thought the two were just like English and Merkan, except flipped across the equator rather than the mid Atlantic.

Not so unfortunately, Dries and I speak a very different language, it's not just a dialect.

[Svartalf]

Dutch is very good at developing weird dialects that get very far from the tree indeed... Just look at English.

[Audley Strange]

This might sound like an odd question but was Swabian a separate language at one point or is the dialect so distinct that it could have been mistaken for one? I'm asking because I'm writing something about the Hohenstaufen mob and got the impression that people from the surrounding regions considered it a "foreign tongue", but its a vague impression, I don't know if it was hyperbole, error or actually the case.

Any ideas?

It appears to be a dialect, but the issue is not clear cut. You may find the following links useful:

http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa051198.htm
http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa051898.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German

Cheers for the links, I had looked at the latter two. I should have guessed it wouldn't be obvious. I suppose it's akin to Scots. Thanks again.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

Dutch is very good at developing weird dialects that get very far from the tree indeed... Just look at English.

English is North Sea Germanic, Dutch is Weser-Rhine Germanic. I think you're getting Dutch confused with Frisian - I'm not sure Johnny Frisian would appreciate that.

[John_fi_Skye]

Dutch is very good at developing weird dialects that get very far from the tree indeed... Just look at English.

English is North Sea Germanic, Dutch is Weser-Rhine Germanic. I think you're getting Dutch confused with Frisian - I'm not sure Johnny Frisian would appreciate that.

English also underwent a particularly big linguistic shift after 1066, with the infusion of lots of Latinate lexical items from Norman French. Thus, although the basis of English is Germanic, its surface features look pretty different from those of thoroughly Germanic languages.

[Svartalf]

Dutch is very good at developing weird dialects that get very far from the tree indeed... Just look at English.

English is North Sea Germanic, Dutch is Weser-Rhine Germanic. I think you're getting Dutch confused with Frisian - I'm not sure Johnny Frisian would appreciate that.

Right, I had totally forgotten about Low Franconian/Dutch being its own subfamily among West German ones

[JimC]

Well, I fuckin' speak Australian, so youse can all get fucked...

[Svartalf]

As Béarla lé do thoil?

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...

English also underwent a particularly big linguistic shift after 1066 (ten sixty-six), with the infusion of lots of Latinate lexical items from Norman French. Thus, although the basis of English is Germanic, its surface features look pretty different from those of thoroughly Germanic languages.

All the blue words above are Germanic. (unsure of 'big')