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

[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.