Die gonze Welt iss bayrisch!

[muckefuck]

We had a poster in a linguistics forum I regularly contribute to ask for help finding out more about the "Dresden dialect". He's apparently doing a report on it for class. I offered my commiserations that he had (most likely unwittingly) chosen what is generally considered the ugliest form of German, namely Saxon dialect. But there's another regular poster there who we're always berating for beginning posts with "I always thought" and basically never ever seeking out data that would either confirm or refute his preconceptions. So it occurred to me that perhaps I should try finding some support for this assertion of my own.

So here you have the results of a recent (2008) poll by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach (basically Germany's answer to Gallup). Their methodology isn't ideal: From what I can ascertain, they presented respondents with a list of seventeen "dialects" and asked them "Are there some which you especially like hearing?" and then "Which dialects do you not like hearing, which do you not like at all?" So first of all you have the problem that there are any number of ways to slice up the spoken varieties of Germany and they're presenting just one of these as authoritative. (I found other versions of this poll that split out "Ruhrpott" from Rhenish, for instance.) Next there's the issue of how many respondents have heard reasonable samples of each dialect, or could even identify if they had.

For instance, I find that my beloved Alemannic is pretty low on both lists (with only 8% saying they like hearing it and 5% saying they'd rather not). Is it really that most Germans don't care for it one way or another or that they simply can't distinguish it from Swabian? Dialects of territories which are no longer German (e.g. East Prussia, Pommerania, Silesia) showed up low on both lists. Of course, so did Palatinate German, and I don't think there are many people in Germany with no inkling what that sounds like. (Helmut Kohl was widely ridiculed for his Palatinate accent.) Seems to me the best methodology would've been to play recordings of dialect samples without identifying them by name and then ask people to rate them. But now we've crossed the line from "survey" to "laboratory research".

So, for what it's worth, the top three are Bavarian (35%), North German Platt (29%), and Berliner (22%). The first is no surprise given that more than one in seven Germans lives in Bavaria and that Bavarians are Germany's most eager dialect-speakers. (According to charts further down the page, 45% answered affirmatively to the question "I speak dialect pretty much all the time".) I was caught a bit off guard by the next two given that North Germans are the least likely of anyone in the German-speaking zone to speak dialect. (10% on the "speaking dialect always" question.) A certain romantic nostalgia taking hold?

But at least I now have solid evidence for my initial assertion: fully 54% of respondents disliked hearing Saxon. No other variety provoked so strong a reaction. Interestingly, the next three on the list are Bavarian (21%), Berliner (21%), and Swabian (17%). This rather strengthens my hypothesis about how familiarity influences the ratings. No German can credibly claim they don't have any idea what "Swabian" sounds like, and it shows up in fourth place on both lists.

Comments

[alcippe.livejournal.com]

I was in Zürich today for the first time and could definitely hear a difference in the way that spoke. People have told me "not to pick up that accent," and I can see what people mean generally (it does sound a little hokey), but I found it nice with the way they pronounce R's, like birds warbling. It was interesting to hear such a distinct difference from the way people speak here in Berlin.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Did I ever tell you about the breakthrough I had after almost a year in Freiburg when I finally "understood" Swiss German? I was so proud of my ability to have a conversation with a woman who spoke it, only to have her turn to speak to another Swiss afterwards, at which point I realised that what she had been speaking to me was actually her best approximation of Standarddeutsch.

Have people also been warning you against picking up Berlinerisch? I was honestly stunned to see it so high on the list. As I understand it, it's basically dead outside of the working-class districts of the former East, which doesn't exactly sound like a recipe for prestige.

[alcippe.livejournal.com]

I have a friend here who grew up here and knows the local dialect. He told me to not even try to learn it – that it was too strange and basically "unlearnable". I'm going to take his advice and just focus on hochdeutsch. The Berlin accent of which you speak (the working class of the former East) does sound a little ugly to tell you the truth.

[alcippe.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's the same with the "Chicago" accent, though. I'm from Chicago but have no "Chicago" (working class) accent. There are a lot of people here who speak beautifully, it's just that the "lower" edges of society have a certain way of speaking that doesn't sound nice. Which is just like in Chicago – I can hardly think of a worse sounding accent than someone who was born and raised in Cicero!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I mean. I would expect Berlinerisch, due to its association with working-class inner-city[*] Ossis, to have about the same cachet as the Chicago accent. (I have rather warm feelings toward "Chicagoese", but that may be precisely because I didn't grow up around here.) Or the "New Yawk" accent, which is so negatively perceived that a substantial proportion of New Yorkers and New Jerseyites actually get instruction to reduce their accents. (A guy I met a couple months ago says his [Scottish-born] mother used to make him read the newspaper out loud so she could correct his New Yorkisms.)

But who knows? "Estuary English" or "Mockney" is spreading at the expense of more posh accents in Britain, so perhaps there's been a similar revaluation of (traditionally) working-class speech in Germany.

[*] Well, outer city, technically, but you know how European cities are often inside-out vis-à-vis American ones, with the big housing projects located far from the centre.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I know I should be a good relativist (as you are in your original phrase, kinda) but I still goggled at your assertion that European cities are inside out. As if postwar Jane Jacobs were something other than a highly contingent, not to say weird collection of circumstances that exploded the nuclear community in some US cities.

I know. You were explaining "inner city." i'm just goggling, is all.

[gorkabear.livejournal.com]

I googled for some time and I couldn't find a similar survey for Spanish accents. Granted, I belong to the school of "I like the way my neighbours speak the language" (and I'm supported by the exaggerated fact that 50% of people in Spanish TV stations are Catalan).

What I found was this piece of journalism shit: http://www.arboldenoticias.com/content/view/2094/43/ which doesn't imply anything else but that Catalans sound horrible to other subjects of King John Charles I. *shrugh*

What's your favourite Spanish accent? And Catalan? (To me it's clear: good Catalan actors speak great Spanish and the best Catalan is spoken in Menorca)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar enough with the range of Catalan accents to give an informed answer. I can tell Balearic from mainland Eastern Catalan and I could probably identify Northern Catalan due to the vowel shift, but that's about it. I can't distinguish Valencian from other Western Catalan varieties, and I certainly can't tell the difference between, say, Barcelonese and Tarragonese. But if you held a gun to my head, I might say Mallorcan, because I love listening to Antònia Font.

With Spanish there are just so many different accents that it's hard to choose. I have a soft spot for Peruvian Spanish (particularly Iquitense) because of some of the people I've known from there. But I suppose it's very telling that the kind of Spanish I myself try to speak is Castilian with a bit of a Catalan accent (although yeísta).

a few unsorted thoughts.

[anicca-anicca.livejournal.com]

Their methodology isn't ideal. - Halleluja.
Is it really that most Germans don't care for it one way or another or that they simply can't distinguish it from Swabian? - I think not establishing that flaws the whole report.
For Bavarian, I'm pretty sure haters equal lovers, same goes for Berliner. Would be interesting to know if its the regional neighbours who have an opinion on the smaller dialects.
And while Bavarians tend not to even try to speak Standard, Swebians and Saxonians couldn't hide the accent if they tried, which makes them quite a big distinguishable group, even after decades elsewhere.
Ah, and while I'm painfully aware that Palatinate is really unpopular, in a similarly unscientific survey it was rated most unsexy of all (hell if I care... :-(, Helmut Kohl's accent was only part regional, (not being able to pronounce a voiced "s", for example) but for the most part it simply was a speech impediment. Pronouncing the "ch" in "ich" etc. as "sch" would have been dialectal, but not the other way round. His "sch"s came out as "ch" in most cases, but that was just a personal feature, maybe the result of over-correction at an earlier point.
Where else would the rest of Germany hear a distinct Palatinate German accent, except from Boris Becker? Määnzer Fasnacht, which is so stuffy it makes you weep. Can't blame the world for not knowing how incredibly beautiful it is, really...

Regional dialects seem to be picking up after being maligned for way too long. I don't know anybody from North Germany who grew up an active dialect speaker (and I ask them), but there is a rise in TV programmes now with not just old folks but people like Ditsche or Ina Müller speaking local dialects where in the old days there used to be just Ohnesorg Theater.

Re: a few unsorted thoughts.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

His "sch"s came out as "ch" in most cases, but that was just a personal feature, maybe the result of over-correction at an earlier point.

It's a hypercorrection I've heard from other Rhinelanders and Palatinaters, however. Someone I knew on sci.lang told me he had a Rhenish colleague who once said "elektroschemiche Zwichenchischt", much to the delight of the other researchers.

a hypercorrection I've heard from other Rhinelanders and Palatinaters

[anicca-anicca.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, yes. But does that make it a feature of the dialect, or just a feature of dialect speakers with either a speech impediment or the inability to distinguish and apply the two sounds? It's viewed as a speech impediment by speakers of Palatinate.

I saw a professional actress recently who, on stage, talked incessantly about "japaniche Kampffiche", etc, and she was born in Speyer. I've known her for a while and I can't believe why with her job she would never tackle that, it's a pretty intolerable speech impediment to my ears. As was Kohl's "Deutchland"...

My 5-year-old niece pronounces all sch's as ch's. She can hear the difference but she simply can't pronounce the sch's. My sister took her to a speech therapist recently who said it's a weakness of the tongue and now they do their little tongue exercises and train how to form a pout every day...