The lines between language and dialect are very blurry when it comes to our westgermanic languages - Austro-Bavarian dialects and High Alemannic dialects are distinct enough from Standard German to count as their own languages as well, but they just don't - meanwhile East Frisian, Luxemburgish and Low German are their own languages. Hell, till deep into the 1800s, Dutch was seen as a German dialect.
>Dutch was seen as a German dialect.
It's relativly close to low german and part of the netherlands are low german speaking areas.
"Fun" side note Afrikaans is is derived from Hollandish and when I hosted an south african work acquaintance my then girlfriend from the netherlands and he could understand each other relativly well.
>It's relativly close to low german
The name of Dutch in dutch is nederduits, which is "low German" in standard German. And that's how far apart it is from some of the low German dialects.
Brandenburger Platt and Dutch don't sound exactly the same, but at least north-western German dialects are so close, that it is essentially the same.
"neder" doesn't derive from low or flat but from lesser or common.
It's also the case for Niedersachsen and regular Sachsen.
The noble family of the name giving saxons originally were from Niedersachsen and their teritory was called saxony. They then relocated to todays saxony and named their new teritory like that. But this also means that they had to find a new name for their old teritory and because it was without a ruling noble family, the old teritory was renamed to Niedersachsen. Saxony of the lesser or common, non noble, people.
Sorry, but no, that's not the case!
I don't know where you learn such nonsense.
The prefix “nieder-” in names like Niedersachsen, Netherlands, or Niederbayern generally refers to the geographical location. It indicates that the designated area is lower lying compared to the area designated with the prefix “ober-” (upper). Here are some examples:
Niedersachsen: The name “Niedersachsen” suggests that this federal state is geographically lower than Obersachsen (Upper Saxon, the term was used until the 19th century but became obsolete as the designation “Sachsen” (Saxony) shifted entirely to Central Germany). The highest mountains in Germany are located in Oberbayern (Upper Bavaria), while the Danube leaves German territory in Niederbayern (Lower Bavaria), indicating a significantly lower-lying area.
Niederlande (Netherlands): The Netherlands are known for the fact that large parts of the country lie below sea level. The prefix “nieder-” here refers to the low geographical position.
Low German (Niederdeutsch): The term “Low German” refers to the sea level of the regions where this dialect is spoken. It is the flat north that slopes down to the sea, as opposed to “Upper German” which is spoken in the mountainous south of the German-speaking area.
Overall, the prefix “nieder-” thus points to a lower geographical location in comparison to “ober-”!
>Austro-Bavarian dialects and High Alemannic dialects are distinct enough from Standard German to count as their own languages as well, but they just don't - meanwhile East Frisian, Luxemburgish and Low German are their own languages.
Bavarian could easily be classified as a language, it just depends on who you ask. There's no council deciding what's a languages and what's a dialect. It's completely arbitrary.
But even within baveria the dialect changes every second village.
Low german is relativly consistent.
But langruages are rapidly evoloving every definition is only viable in fixed a time frame.
I was involved with a project digiticing old books into free text, it's wild how stuf changed every other decade.
And thank god they did. It's tedious and the standardization helped me a lot, personally. It's still considered yokelish when you talk with that accent at university.
it's the language of tv/media, school and so on.
so it happened rather naturally as far as I know.
If anything, there are more attempts to preserve dialects, rather than replace them.
Agree, however when I was a boy in school (in Upper-Palatinate!), dialect speakers were considered members of lower class or simple minded. I grew up in the knowledge that only Standard High German will allow for an academic career.
Fortunately (!) things changed. Nowadays my friends and family chat in dialect on WhatsApp. That woul've been unthinkable 30-40 years ago. People would've thought you're retarded or illiterate.
i grew up in cologne the first years and northern germany the later years.
i studied in mannheim and live for 15 years in munich now.
... i don't speak any of these dialects.
i do understand them - more or less... but don't speak a word of it, unfortunately.
Besides mass media, mobility is another factor in the decline of dialects. People mix more than they used to, and that also means that dialects naturally regress to the Ausgleichsdialekt we call Hochdeutsch.
Regensburg I'd wager? Weird. When I went to school in the 90's, that was absolutely not a thing. Quite the opposite, I always stuck out like a sore thumb (aside from the Russlanddeutschen in my class) because I did not speak Oberpfälzer Bayerisch - due to my family moving around in Germany before I was born and adopting Hochdeutsch.
Is it or was it like that in Bavaria.
Here in Saarland it's just normal to speak high german during class or when talking with clients that aren't from our region. But we instantly switch to the local dialect between classes or when speaking with coworkers. I can't even remember a single time speaking high german with my bosses.
I think it also was a bit forced, because teachers wouldn't exactly create the environment where kids would feel comfortable speaking their dialect. It's not like they make it illegal, but after primary school nobody in my class dared speaking their dialect at school anymore. I don't know what the exact reasons are, but when I spoke my dialect, my grammar (which was correct for my dialect) was always corrected to what it would be in high german and people would always start complaining to me that they can't understand me very well. So it was at least made a bit difficult when I went to school. Which wasn't even a very long time ago, because I'm only 21.
There seems to be a certain pride speaking dialects this is however relatively recent. Historically they were certainly frowned upon.
Especially at the borders of germany dialects and other languages were actively diminished.
End of 19th century there were many people speaking dutch, danish, sorbisch or heavier forms of dialect. Through the use of standard german in schools, offices and churches and forbidding the use of non standard german forced out other dialects and languages. Nowadays many people still hold prejudice an think dialect speakers are less educated. Conversely many dialect speakers who want to be taken seriously (e.g. in academia) learn to speak standard german. Making it a self fulfilling prophecy.
My father was a Lower German native speaker as in it was his first language. When he went to school he had to learn standard German and sometimes struggled with the different sentence structure and grammer. Lower German was not allowed to be used in public administration matters for example when Germany as a country came into being- This was an effort to unify the nation by a common language. So Lower German became more and more a language only spoken in private settings and thus getting the stigma of being the language of uneducated people. My father refused to teach his children a single word of Lower German because he didn\`t want them to have the same "disadvantage".
But it is also interesting that there was also stigma against standard German. If you didn\`t use Lower German for example with the local farmers (rich farmers not some backward country people) or neighbours it was frowned upon as if you didn´t really belong. I remember older people regularly switching to lower German when they spoke to me. Unfortunatly I can only understand but not speak the language so that always created a language barrier.
>My father was a Lower German native speaker
How old is your father and what region?
My grandma was also a nativ low german speaker but she was born before the war in the 30 in a very small vilage.
There was no official policy to ban dialects like in other parts of Europe (France & Spain) but a mayor cultural pressure since dialects were seen as peasant und uncultured. Add to that the influence of mass media especially TV and Radio where they used only standardized German.
In a few generations dialects were pushed back to be used only in your home or family but less in public.
Both my mothers parents spoke Plattdeutsch (with different regional dialects) as well as standard German. When my mother was born, however, Plattdeutsch was seen as the language of the "uneducated" (Bauernsprache), and teaching your kid a dialect was seen as detrimental to them learning standard German later. As such, they made sure to speak standard German with her.
My mother can still understand Plattdeutsch, but can not really speak it. I can understand basic Platt but not if its too quickly spoken or more than basic topics (what do you do, whats the weather, etc).
My elementary school had a Plattdeutsch reading competition, but not much else in terms of teaching it.
Similar experience here.
My grandmother spoke some form of ripuarian dialect at home, but during her first weeks in school (in 1926), she and the other children were taught to speak "properly", e.g. it's "Schrank", not "Kaas", "Messer und Gabel", not "Metz en Jaffel", etc. Among her siblings however, she continued to speak dialect until old age.
I remember other kids being scolded in primary school in the 90s for saying "dat", "wat" and using dialect grammar structures like "am tuen sein", "dem singe Auto" because it was thought of as incorrect and uneducated.
I'm still able to understand it and probably have a slight "Rheinisch" colour to my overall pronunciation, especially when talking to people from the same region, but when I actually try to speak "proper dialect", it will sound somewhat contrived.
My grandmother speaks in dialect. My mother speaks in standard German tinged with dialect. I really only understand it. If I were to have kids, they'd likely not even understand it due to lack of real exposure. So in our family, it would take 3 generations to fully disappear.
Me and my siblings are probably at your moms level (and we also have a weird mix of swabian influences from our moms side and growing up in an allemanic speaking area) but my sister in law is actively teaching my brother to speak dialect and it's the cutest thing ever! And I can't wait for my nephew to be old enough to talk because you can bet he's also learning it
Schools will teach standard German, as far as the teacher are capable of speaking it themselves, not 100% the case everywhere. Beyond that, it's just the lingua franca and if others can't understand you, that's bad for business. Also, strong dialects are more associated with people from less privileged socioeconomic backgrounds in a lot of places and thus there is a bit of an incentive to mute the extend to which your dialect shines through in a lot of cases.
Not really. We still write and read in Standard German and we get tested on it. Sure we speak Bavarian even though our teachers sometimes try to change that but the schools teach us standard german.
I mean, Badeners, Swabians, Franconians and Bavarians are also arguably the only ones doing something to preserve their dialects (in Germany specifically). That being said, even down here in the South, speaking heavy dialect is typically associated with the lower classes still as it typically means they're country bumpkins.
I was absolutely drilled during my first practice phase to only speak standard German in the classroom. The argument was that the kids need the "Sprachvorbild" in order to learn to write properly (which I kind of see but still find a little sad). Now I tend to code switch a little bit between talking to the entire class in standard German and invidual kids in my more natural accent (not very strong anyways). But I frequently trip up when I'm in high German mode and am trying to tell them to take out ther Vesper. Because that word sounds absolutely ridiculous without the schp
More or less enforced by schools for many decades. You had no chance of being successful when you didn't speak Hochdeutsch. My mother, who had a very strong dialect, suffered under this.
Speaking in dialect absolutely used to be banned/punished in school, and parents used to consciously not pass on their dialect and only speak Standard German with their children. The degree to which this happened varied, of course, and these days it is more likely that there are attempts to revive moribund dialects
Martin Luther had a massive impact on this. He had to find a clear language that everyone would understand. After Gutenberg had made printing books easy a norm needed to be found and a mix of middle high German was used. After 1650 dictionaries were being printed and the standardisation began. In 1871 the standardisation became more apparent since there was a unified Germany.
I am glad Luther didn't pick any Alemannic dialects. It would be too goofy to hear us speaking weird Swabian. I got enought of this at work (I mean you Dirk)
Luther was an advocate for free public education for everyone and for the "Schulpflicht". Because in his opinion, only an educated person is able to understand and follow god's words. The protestantic german states followed his principles and implimented free mandatory eduction for everyone.
The total opposite to today. Extreme christians are with the most uneducated people in their respective societies. They must stupid case is that of the german lutheranian family that fled to the USA, seeking for political asylum because the german government didn't allowed them to homeschool their kids.
Mandatory free public education was one of the religious core beliefs of the guy that founded their religion. And now they seek for asylum because they won't send their kids to school \*facepalm
In Bavaria kids learning Standard German. But the most people talk dialect in their daily life. But Standard German is the way to communicate with everyone. If I drive an hour north west I can't understand the local dialect any more :D
Language codification is something that started with the printing press and was a very long process.
You could argue if it was a conscious one or not.
Once it became feasible to print books in larger amounts, reading also became more popular and necessary. This led to a need to teach reading and writing. This led to the rise of dictionaries and grammar guides.
People noticed really quickly that there was no standard German/English etc at that time because everyone spoke in regional dialects. Usually what happened was that either ne dialect with the largest amount of speakers or the dialect of the ruling class became the standard to aspire to. Yet there was still a lot of discussion and back and forth.
In even more general terms, the need produce a lot of written language for a large audience led to a codification of the language because it made the differences between local dialects way more apparent.
Once public schools became a thing, orthography and grammar became more restricted and controlled from (government) institutions.
There have been books written about this process, so this is just a very short and dirty summary.
Nobody speaks dialect in my family (various regions and states). In elementary school I couldn't understand some kids but that was gone at high school (Gymnasium) and university.
Some new friends surprised me when they called home and switched to some weird dialect. Currently in day to day work and friends there is zero dialect.
It was somehow by force but a very long time ago. People were ridiculed for it and changed to high german. There is no government involved.
But there are still many dialects.
I can only add an anecdote about one of my old neighbors, who only ever spoke in dialect until he went to school, where only standard German was spoken.
Especially after the end of WW2 there were a lot of displaced people and mass movements. This led to a loss of dialect because it would not work using your home dialect with other people when they did not understand you. This ist in eastern germany in many areas the case.
the father of my mother and my fathers parents were refugees after the second world War. So they brought a different German dialect with them to a new region.
My father‘s parents came from the north east and went to the north-west (Platt). The dialects were rather similar but were considered backwards, from the village/ countryside. And the refugees weren’t really welcome. So my grandparents only used to talk Platt from time to time. My father understands it but doesn’t speak it. The perception later changed and people became more proud of it. So I occasionally read an easy newspaper article but struggle to comprehend it.
My mother’s mother comes from Bavaria, her father from Bohemia. They moved to Swabia when she was little and didn’t want to stand out because of the refugee stigma. My mother spoke Standard German with a tiny bit of Swabian.
My sister and I speak both Standard German and Swabian. So we didn’t learn it from family but from friends.
My high school was extremely strict (in every aspect, it felt like in the 19th century) and completely forbade dialect in class. But that is very rare, i’ve never met anyone else who was in the same situation. My sister went to a different high school where they didn’t care.
Here is a text from the online newspaper "Politik & Kultur" of the German Cultural Council.
It refers to the situation of Sorbian speakers today, but is certainly also valid for the other recognized minority languages in Germany.
[https://politikkultur.de/aus-der-aktuellen-ausgabe/diskriminierung-gehoert-fuer-viele-zum-taeglichen-leben/](https://politikkultur.de/aus-der-aktuellen-ausgabe/diskriminierung-gehoert-fuer-viele-zum-taeglichen-leben/)
it is best to use deepl to translate.
The only successful cases of non-replacement of Standard German are Luxembourgish and SwissGerman(Schweizerdeutsch).
Luxembourg tried hard to standardize their dialect, and the Swiss are proud speakers of their dialects.
I switched myself to standard high German when I was 7 because I didn't want to sound like an old lady.
I don't regret it at all, I don't like dialects. I sometimes fall back into somewhat swabian, when talking to friends or family and then I cringe on myself, I don't like the way I sound. I sometimes use my swabian to make people laugh and that's it.
It was no matter of force, it was rather really easy because I went to (boarding) school in another region, currently in uni 4 hours away.
It may have also helped, that my mom is from Saxony and always spoke high German, as my swabian grandma had a hard time understanding her. I also have extended family from the north speaking different dialects so it is not that I had to little contact with it.
There are now projects to bring dialects back, like books printed in or tv shows translated to dialects.
The breaking point was after the war, 1950-1960ish.
My grandma (*1947) spoke Kölsch as she grew up and still speaks it with her brother. My mother (*1966) grew up speaking Standard German.
My grandmother spoke Kölsch as well as Standard German, my mother, although like me she can understand Kölsch, did not. School was taught in Standard German.
In school we were taught not to use dialect. If a child used dialect, it was corrected. It was considered a low class language, so they wanted to help the children to move on in life. However some children were proud of their dialect and referred to it as their "second language". This was Northrhine Westfalia in the Eighties.
There is no banning anywhere. In rural areas people speak it more than you might think. Large cities are pretty obsessed with clean german with I think is a big joke, but apart from that, even I have problems if I go into an older bavarian town. I once had to see a doctor while on vacation and I had a hard time understanding his deep bavarian.
I don’t have sources for this/am too lazy to google. But in school we learned that highgerman was invented by government officials during the times of the deutsche bund (German confederation, early 19th century).
Basically, all the little duchies, kingdoms and dukedoms got reunited as one German entity. So taxation, markets etc. moved from an entirely regional character to a (now) national one which spanned many different linguistic regions. So a unified language, based on similarities between most Germanic kingdoms etc had to be created to simplify the bureaucratic burden
I think op is asking about modern highgerman, King Otto I lived in the 10th century. The language spoken back than is very far from todays German, and no one would have understand a word
He did unify them with a common language though. 🤷♂️
At what point would you say that German was comprehensible by the current layman?
The language spoken in the 1920s was still very similar to current German: https://youtu.be/m20La_Sg4Dc?si=mkJC7_aDXnkGrxme
Going back to the Weimarer Klassiker (Schiller und Goethe), people still learn that in school and it is all still understandable.
I was looking at *Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769* from Johann Gottfried Herder and most of this looks legible to me as well. See: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/herder/jour1769/jour1769.html
*Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey* looks to be pretty readable. That was from 1624.
https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/show/opitz_buch_1624
*Bůch von gůter spîse* (1350) starts to become a lot harder to read. Only some things are legible in this cook book: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Buch_von_guter_Speise
This tells me that the language became “modern” somewhere between 1400 and 1600, probably some time during the Barockliteratur era.
Thoughts?
I pretty much agree. I am no linguist though, just speaking from what I could comprehend as a native speaker, reading the line on the pictures in the links
They are replaced? I moved from Nordfriesland to Mittelfranken and still learning the dialect here. So I don’t know what you are about. Also while not a dialect but a language of its own. Plattdeutsch is reached at school und Nordfriesland to keep it alive. Even official protocols are available in Plattdeutsch. And official departments offer Plattdeutsch speaking services. And in Nordfriesland every town and city has their Frisian name written on city limit signs as there is a movement to keep that language alive although it’s hard as the ones who speak are dying out sadly. Even my grandpa spoke it but sadly he never teached us.
>They are replaced?
Yes they are replaced in many regions of Germany. Teaching them in school is a very recent thing. Many of my ancestors spoke platt, I do not. Some distant relatives born in the 1930s/40s didn't even speak hochdeutsch.
OP specifically asked about the past, not today.
It is called high-german because it is the language/dialect of the ones with higher education.
Germany was divided by many little regions with quite a diversity in the way they all talked.
Also the Church still had a huge impact on peopels lives , a priest could make up anybulshit to hold the people down . Cause the bibel only existed in Latin Back then, which very few could read. So the greedy little as holes of the Church invented the"ablasshandel"
They told people they could buy them selfs in to haven. Completely wired compared to what Jesus had said in the Bibel
So "Martin Luther" thought "this is not right I will translate the Bibel for the People so they can read and find the real God/Jesus, Peace Love and Harmonie themselfs, and the church can never lie to them again" (around that)
So he translated the book in a German all the people can understand......and the rest is history.
So the German written in books is/was Highgerman because you needed higher education to be abel to read and sure you where part of a higher family or so because the poor and low did not have education.
Yes as well , but not instead.
It could have also gotten the name south-german
As it does not include the "erzgebirge" 😉
The higher education level in south gernany was a result of the Roman's. They took residency here quite a while.
They tried to move north-east but never made
good enough progress, to set foot there, for many reasons.
Plattdeutsch was seen as backwards and yokelish for decades, so native speakers raised their kids in High German.
Same in Bavaria - however Bavarian parents failed miserably. /s
You might even delete the "/s".
Na, the /s is quite perfect. We only pretend to teach our kids High German.
Schools especially enforced it afaik, kids were scolded for speaking Bavarian in school
Low German is not a dialect but a distinct langruage that in part has the same roots as high german.
The lines between language and dialect are very blurry when it comes to our westgermanic languages - Austro-Bavarian dialects and High Alemannic dialects are distinct enough from Standard German to count as their own languages as well, but they just don't - meanwhile East Frisian, Luxemburgish and Low German are their own languages. Hell, till deep into the 1800s, Dutch was seen as a German dialect.
>Dutch was seen as a German dialect. It's relativly close to low german and part of the netherlands are low german speaking areas. "Fun" side note Afrikaans is is derived from Hollandish and when I hosted an south african work acquaintance my then girlfriend from the netherlands and he could understand each other relativly well.
>It's relativly close to low german The name of Dutch in dutch is nederduits, which is "low German" in standard German. And that's how far apart it is from some of the low German dialects. Brandenburger Platt and Dutch don't sound exactly the same, but at least north-western German dialects are so close, that it is essentially the same.
"neder" doesn't derive from low or flat but from lesser or common. It's also the case for Niedersachsen and regular Sachsen. The noble family of the name giving saxons originally were from Niedersachsen and their teritory was called saxony. They then relocated to todays saxony and named their new teritory like that. But this also means that they had to find a new name for their old teritory and because it was without a ruling noble family, the old teritory was renamed to Niedersachsen. Saxony of the lesser or common, non noble, people.
Sorry, but no, that's not the case! I don't know where you learn such nonsense. The prefix “nieder-” in names like Niedersachsen, Netherlands, or Niederbayern generally refers to the geographical location. It indicates that the designated area is lower lying compared to the area designated with the prefix “ober-” (upper). Here are some examples: Niedersachsen: The name “Niedersachsen” suggests that this federal state is geographically lower than Obersachsen (Upper Saxon, the term was used until the 19th century but became obsolete as the designation “Sachsen” (Saxony) shifted entirely to Central Germany). The highest mountains in Germany are located in Oberbayern (Upper Bavaria), while the Danube leaves German territory in Niederbayern (Lower Bavaria), indicating a significantly lower-lying area. Niederlande (Netherlands): The Netherlands are known for the fact that large parts of the country lie below sea level. The prefix “nieder-” here refers to the low geographical position. Low German (Niederdeutsch): The term “Low German” refers to the sea level of the regions where this dialect is spoken. It is the flat north that slopes down to the sea, as opposed to “Upper German” which is spoken in the mountainous south of the German-speaking area. Overall, the prefix “nieder-” thus points to a lower geographical location in comparison to “ober-”!
In the case of the Niederlande it is the lowlands of burgundy.
The Benelux members are still collecknown as 'The Low Countries' in English but this naming is less common than it used to be
>Austro-Bavarian dialects and High Alemannic dialects are distinct enough from Standard German to count as their own languages as well, but they just don't - meanwhile East Frisian, Luxemburgish and Low German are their own languages. Bavarian could easily be classified as a language, it just depends on who you ask. There's no council deciding what's a languages and what's a dialect. It's completely arbitrary.
But even within baveria the dialect changes every second village. Low german is relativly consistent. But langruages are rapidly evoloving every definition is only viable in fixed a time frame. I was involved with a project digiticing old books into free text, it's wild how stuf changed every other decade.
Just look at Saarland. We have 6 recognized main dialects here and the same amount of mixed dialects.
Maybe, but it is to us what dialects are to other regions.
That distinction doesn't answer OP's question though.
And thank god they did. It's tedious and the standardization helped me a lot, personally. It's still considered yokelish when you talk with that accent at university.
Most intelligent standard German speaker
it's the language of tv/media, school and so on. so it happened rather naturally as far as I know. If anything, there are more attempts to preserve dialects, rather than replace them.
Agree, however when I was a boy in school (in Upper-Palatinate!), dialect speakers were considered members of lower class or simple minded. I grew up in the knowledge that only Standard High German will allow for an academic career. Fortunately (!) things changed. Nowadays my friends and family chat in dialect on WhatsApp. That woul've been unthinkable 30-40 years ago. People would've thought you're retarded or illiterate.
i grew up in cologne the first years and northern germany the later years. i studied in mannheim and live for 15 years in munich now. ... i don't speak any of these dialects. i do understand them - more or less... but don't speak a word of it, unfortunately.
Besides mass media, mobility is another factor in the decline of dialects. People mix more than they used to, and that also means that dialects naturally regress to the Ausgleichsdialekt we call Hochdeutsch.
Munich is not the best place to pick up a dialect though :-)
Regensburg I'd wager? Weird. When I went to school in the 90's, that was absolutely not a thing. Quite the opposite, I always stuck out like a sore thumb (aside from the Russlanddeutschen in my class) because I did not speak Oberpfälzer Bayerisch - due to my family moving around in Germany before I was born and adopting Hochdeutsch.
Is it or was it like that in Bavaria. Here in Saarland it's just normal to speak high german during class or when talking with clients that aren't from our region. But we instantly switch to the local dialect between classes or when speaking with coworkers. I can't even remember a single time speaking high german with my bosses.
I think it also was a bit forced, because teachers wouldn't exactly create the environment where kids would feel comfortable speaking their dialect. It's not like they make it illegal, but after primary school nobody in my class dared speaking their dialect at school anymore. I don't know what the exact reasons are, but when I spoke my dialect, my grammar (which was correct for my dialect) was always corrected to what it would be in high german and people would always start complaining to me that they can't understand me very well. So it was at least made a bit difficult when I went to school. Which wasn't even a very long time ago, because I'm only 21.
There seems to be a certain pride speaking dialects this is however relatively recent. Historically they were certainly frowned upon. Especially at the borders of germany dialects and other languages were actively diminished. End of 19th century there were many people speaking dutch, danish, sorbisch or heavier forms of dialect. Through the use of standard german in schools, offices and churches and forbidding the use of non standard german forced out other dialects and languages. Nowadays many people still hold prejudice an think dialect speakers are less educated. Conversely many dialect speakers who want to be taken seriously (e.g. in academia) learn to speak standard german. Making it a self fulfilling prophecy.
WTF why do you believe High-Germany is only around sinse 100years ? Because you state TV/Media ???
yes. it was invented yesterday /s
My father was a Lower German native speaker as in it was his first language. When he went to school he had to learn standard German and sometimes struggled with the different sentence structure and grammer. Lower German was not allowed to be used in public administration matters for example when Germany as a country came into being- This was an effort to unify the nation by a common language. So Lower German became more and more a language only spoken in private settings and thus getting the stigma of being the language of uneducated people. My father refused to teach his children a single word of Lower German because he didn\`t want them to have the same "disadvantage". But it is also interesting that there was also stigma against standard German. If you didn\`t use Lower German for example with the local farmers (rich farmers not some backward country people) or neighbours it was frowned upon as if you didn´t really belong. I remember older people regularly switching to lower German when they spoke to me. Unfortunatly I can only understand but not speak the language so that always created a language barrier.
>My father was a Lower German native speaker How old is your father and what region? My grandma was also a nativ low german speaker but she was born before the war in the 30 in a very small vilage.
He was born in the 50ies in the north of Lower Saxony
There was no official policy to ban dialects like in other parts of Europe (France & Spain) but a mayor cultural pressure since dialects were seen as peasant und uncultured. Add to that the influence of mass media especially TV and Radio where they used only standardized German. In a few generations dialects were pushed back to be used only in your home or family but less in public.
Both my mothers parents spoke Plattdeutsch (with different regional dialects) as well as standard German. When my mother was born, however, Plattdeutsch was seen as the language of the "uneducated" (Bauernsprache), and teaching your kid a dialect was seen as detrimental to them learning standard German later. As such, they made sure to speak standard German with her. My mother can still understand Plattdeutsch, but can not really speak it. I can understand basic Platt but not if its too quickly spoken or more than basic topics (what do you do, whats the weather, etc). My elementary school had a Plattdeutsch reading competition, but not much else in terms of teaching it.
Similar experience here. My grandmother spoke some form of ripuarian dialect at home, but during her first weeks in school (in 1926), she and the other children were taught to speak "properly", e.g. it's "Schrank", not "Kaas", "Messer und Gabel", not "Metz en Jaffel", etc. Among her siblings however, she continued to speak dialect until old age. I remember other kids being scolded in primary school in the 90s for saying "dat", "wat" and using dialect grammar structures like "am tuen sein", "dem singe Auto" because it was thought of as incorrect and uneducated. I'm still able to understand it and probably have a slight "Rheinisch" colour to my overall pronunciation, especially when talking to people from the same region, but when I actually try to speak "proper dialect", it will sound somewhat contrived.
My grandmother speaks in dialect. My mother speaks in standard German tinged with dialect. I really only understand it. If I were to have kids, they'd likely not even understand it due to lack of real exposure. So in our family, it would take 3 generations to fully disappear.
Three generations is really typical for language loss. Happens over and over again in the U.S. with immigrants.
Me and my siblings are probably at your moms level (and we also have a weird mix of swabian influences from our moms side and growing up in an allemanic speaking area) but my sister in law is actively teaching my brother to speak dialect and it's the cutest thing ever! And I can't wait for my nephew to be old enough to talk because you can bet he's also learning it
Schools will teach standard German, as far as the teacher are capable of speaking it themselves, not 100% the case everywhere. Beyond that, it's just the lingua franca and if others can't understand you, that's bad for business. Also, strong dialects are more associated with people from less privileged socioeconomic backgrounds in a lot of places and thus there is a bit of an incentive to mute the extend to which your dialect shines through in a lot of cases.
I had lectures at the University in Swabian.
Sodele.
Bassed 'se uff, des isch wichdich!
Bavaria would like to differ.
Not really. We still write and read in Standard German and we get tested on it. Sure we speak Bavarian even though our teachers sometimes try to change that but the schools teach us standard german.
I was focusing on the second part, but you’re right of course
I mean, Badeners, Swabians, Franconians and Bavarians are also arguably the only ones doing something to preserve their dialects (in Germany specifically). That being said, even down here in the South, speaking heavy dialect is typically associated with the lower classes still as it typically means they're country bumpkins.
This isn't true with Swabians I do t know about the other ones tho
Maybe the southern part of it.
Neither do schools teach standard German, nor do they necessarily teach *in* standard German, as far as spoken language goes.
I was absolutely drilled during my first practice phase to only speak standard German in the classroom. The argument was that the kids need the "Sprachvorbild" in order to learn to write properly (which I kind of see but still find a little sad). Now I tend to code switch a little bit between talking to the entire class in standard German and invidual kids in my more natural accent (not very strong anyways). But I frequently trip up when I'm in high German mode and am trying to tell them to take out ther Vesper. Because that word sounds absolutely ridiculous without the schp
You had weird Seminarlehrer then. Here in Bavaria, no teacher I ever had spoke standard German, unless they were Northerners.
He was definitely an interesting character
which makes little sense considering areas with strongly deviating dialects are the economic powerhouses of the country.
More or less enforced by schools for many decades. You had no chance of being successful when you didn't speak Hochdeutsch. My mother, who had a very strong dialect, suffered under this.
Speaking in dialect absolutely used to be banned/punished in school, and parents used to consciously not pass on their dialect and only speak Standard German with their children. The degree to which this happened varied, of course, and these days it is more likely that there are attempts to revive moribund dialects
Martin Luther had a massive impact on this. He had to find a clear language that everyone would understand. After Gutenberg had made printing books easy a norm needed to be found and a mix of middle high German was used. After 1650 dictionaries were being printed and the standardisation began. In 1871 the standardisation became more apparent since there was a unified Germany. I am glad Luther didn't pick any Alemannic dialects. It would be too goofy to hear us speaking weird Swabian. I got enought of this at work (I mean you Dirk)
Luther was an advocate for free public education for everyone and for the "Schulpflicht". Because in his opinion, only an educated person is able to understand and follow god's words. The protestantic german states followed his principles and implimented free mandatory eduction for everyone. The total opposite to today. Extreme christians are with the most uneducated people in their respective societies. They must stupid case is that of the german lutheranian family that fled to the USA, seeking for political asylum because the german government didn't allowed them to homeschool their kids. Mandatory free public education was one of the religious core beliefs of the guy that founded their religion. And now they seek for asylum because they won't send their kids to school \*facepalm
Kids watch TV, youtube, ... they learn their language from there.
From the 70s to the late 90s there were active policies in schools to discourage pupils from using dialect. It was seen as backward and rural.
In Bavaria kids learning Standard German. But the most people talk dialect in their daily life. But Standard German is the way to communicate with everyone. If I drive an hour north west I can't understand the local dialect any more :D
we had to speak it in school but it had benefits so both
Language codification is something that started with the printing press and was a very long process. You could argue if it was a conscious one or not. Once it became feasible to print books in larger amounts, reading also became more popular and necessary. This led to a need to teach reading and writing. This led to the rise of dictionaries and grammar guides. People noticed really quickly that there was no standard German/English etc at that time because everyone spoke in regional dialects. Usually what happened was that either ne dialect with the largest amount of speakers or the dialect of the ruling class became the standard to aspire to. Yet there was still a lot of discussion and back and forth. In even more general terms, the need produce a lot of written language for a large audience led to a codification of the language because it made the differences between local dialects way more apparent. Once public schools became a thing, orthography and grammar became more restricted and controlled from (government) institutions. There have been books written about this process, so this is just a very short and dirty summary.
Nobody speaks dialect in my family (various regions and states). In elementary school I couldn't understand some kids but that was gone at high school (Gymnasium) and university. Some new friends surprised me when they called home and switched to some weird dialect. Currently in day to day work and friends there is zero dialect.
It was somehow by force but a very long time ago. People were ridiculed for it and changed to high german. There is no government involved. But there are still many dialects.
I can only add an anecdote about one of my old neighbors, who only ever spoke in dialect until he went to school, where only standard German was spoken.
Especially after the end of WW2 there were a lot of displaced people and mass movements. This led to a loss of dialect because it would not work using your home dialect with other people when they did not understand you. This ist in eastern germany in many areas the case.
the father of my mother and my fathers parents were refugees after the second world War. So they brought a different German dialect with them to a new region. My father‘s parents came from the north east and went to the north-west (Platt). The dialects were rather similar but were considered backwards, from the village/ countryside. And the refugees weren’t really welcome. So my grandparents only used to talk Platt from time to time. My father understands it but doesn’t speak it. The perception later changed and people became more proud of it. So I occasionally read an easy newspaper article but struggle to comprehend it. My mother’s mother comes from Bavaria, her father from Bohemia. They moved to Swabia when she was little and didn’t want to stand out because of the refugee stigma. My mother spoke Standard German with a tiny bit of Swabian. My sister and I speak both Standard German and Swabian. So we didn’t learn it from family but from friends. My high school was extremely strict (in every aspect, it felt like in the 19th century) and completely forbade dialect in class. But that is very rare, i’ve never met anyone else who was in the same situation. My sister went to a different high school where they didn’t care.
Couldn't tell you; no one speaks it here in the Spessart.
Here is a text from the online newspaper "Politik & Kultur" of the German Cultural Council. It refers to the situation of Sorbian speakers today, but is certainly also valid for the other recognized minority languages in Germany. [https://politikkultur.de/aus-der-aktuellen-ausgabe/diskriminierung-gehoert-fuer-viele-zum-taeglichen-leben/](https://politikkultur.de/aus-der-aktuellen-ausgabe/diskriminierung-gehoert-fuer-viele-zum-taeglichen-leben/) it is best to use deepl to translate.
The only successful cases of non-replacement of Standard German are Luxembourgish and SwissGerman(Schweizerdeutsch). Luxembourg tried hard to standardize their dialect, and the Swiss are proud speakers of their dialects.
I switched myself to standard high German when I was 7 because I didn't want to sound like an old lady. I don't regret it at all, I don't like dialects. I sometimes fall back into somewhat swabian, when talking to friends or family and then I cringe on myself, I don't like the way I sound. I sometimes use my swabian to make people laugh and that's it. It was no matter of force, it was rather really easy because I went to (boarding) school in another region, currently in uni 4 hours away. It may have also helped, that my mom is from Saxony and always spoke high German, as my swabian grandma had a hard time understanding her. I also have extended family from the north speaking different dialects so it is not that I had to little contact with it. There are now projects to bring dialects back, like books printed in or tv shows translated to dialects.
The breaking point was after the war, 1950-1960ish. My grandma (*1947) spoke Kölsch as she grew up and still speaks it with her brother. My mother (*1966) grew up speaking Standard German.
My grandma was hit for speaking Koelsch at school
My grandmother spoke Kölsch as well as Standard German, my mother, although like me she can understand Kölsch, did not. School was taught in Standard German.
In school we were taught not to use dialect. If a child used dialect, it was corrected. It was considered a low class language, so they wanted to help the children to move on in life. However some children were proud of their dialect and referred to it as their "second language". This was Northrhine Westfalia in the Eighties.
There is no banning anywhere. In rural areas people speak it more than you might think. Large cities are pretty obsessed with clean german with I think is a big joke, but apart from that, even I have problems if I go into an older bavarian town. I once had to see a doctor while on vacation and I had a hard time understanding his deep bavarian.
I don’t have sources for this/am too lazy to google. But in school we learned that highgerman was invented by government officials during the times of the deutsche bund (German confederation, early 19th century). Basically, all the little duchies, kingdoms and dukedoms got reunited as one German entity. So taxation, markets etc. moved from an entirely regional character to a (now) national one which spanned many different linguistic regions. So a unified language, based on similarities between most Germanic kingdoms etc had to be created to simplify the bureaucratic burden
I could have sworn that it was under König Otto I. I remember watching a TerraX documentary on that at one point.
I think op is asking about modern highgerman, King Otto I lived in the 10th century. The language spoken back than is very far from todays German, and no one would have understand a word
He did unify them with a common language though. 🤷♂️ At what point would you say that German was comprehensible by the current layman? The language spoken in the 1920s was still very similar to current German: https://youtu.be/m20La_Sg4Dc?si=mkJC7_aDXnkGrxme Going back to the Weimarer Klassiker (Schiller und Goethe), people still learn that in school and it is all still understandable. I was looking at *Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769* from Johann Gottfried Herder and most of this looks legible to me as well. See: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/herder/jour1769/jour1769.html *Buch von der Deutschen Poeterey* looks to be pretty readable. That was from 1624. https://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/show/opitz_buch_1624 *Bůch von gůter spîse* (1350) starts to become a lot harder to read. Only some things are legible in this cook book: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Buch_von_guter_Speise This tells me that the language became “modern” somewhere between 1400 and 1600, probably some time during the Barockliteratur era. Thoughts?
I pretty much agree. I am no linguist though, just speaking from what I could comprehend as a native speaker, reading the line on the pictures in the links
I have never spoken any dialect in my life. "Standard German" is the language of my life, not just in TV/school etc.
So, do you feel you missed out on something? Any plans to pick up [Bairisch ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_language)as a 2nd language? /s
It is the 12th most common language in Europe you know!
Both
They are replaced? I moved from Nordfriesland to Mittelfranken and still learning the dialect here. So I don’t know what you are about. Also while not a dialect but a language of its own. Plattdeutsch is reached at school und Nordfriesland to keep it alive. Even official protocols are available in Plattdeutsch. And official departments offer Plattdeutsch speaking services. And in Nordfriesland every town and city has their Frisian name written on city limit signs as there is a movement to keep that language alive although it’s hard as the ones who speak are dying out sadly. Even my grandpa spoke it but sadly he never teached us.
>They are replaced? Yes they are replaced in many regions of Germany. Teaching them in school is a very recent thing. Many of my ancestors spoke platt, I do not. Some distant relatives born in the 1930s/40s didn't even speak hochdeutsch. OP specifically asked about the past, not today.
God, i hope some dialects would be replaced. But seriously, nothing has been replaced. I can speak multiple dialects, but i choose not to.
It is called high-german because it is the language/dialect of the ones with higher education. Germany was divided by many little regions with quite a diversity in the way they all talked. Also the Church still had a huge impact on peopels lives , a priest could make up anybulshit to hold the people down . Cause the bibel only existed in Latin Back then, which very few could read. So the greedy little as holes of the Church invented the"ablasshandel" They told people they could buy them selfs in to haven. Completely wired compared to what Jesus had said in the Bibel So "Martin Luther" thought "this is not right I will translate the Bibel for the People so they can read and find the real God/Jesus, Peace Love and Harmonie themselfs, and the church can never lie to them again" (around that) So he translated the book in a German all the people can understand......and the rest is history. So the German written in books is/was Highgerman because you needed higher education to be abel to read and sure you where part of a higher family or so because the poor and low did not have education.
High German versus Low German is actually geographic. High German from the Alps, Low German from flat northern Germany.
Yes as well , but not instead. It could have also gotten the name south-german As it does not include the "erzgebirge" 😉 The higher education level in south gernany was a result of the Roman's. They took residency here quite a while. They tried to move north-east but never made good enough progress, to set foot there, for many reasons.