Talk:German dialects

Article Checklist for "German dialects"

Workgroup category or categories	Linguistics Workgroup [Categories OK]
Article status	Developing article: beyond a stub, but incomplete
Underlinked article?	No
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	John Stephenson 03:38, 25 April 2007 (CDT) Pat Palmer 14:30, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

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Notice of intended major revision

Since this article appears to have been brought from Wikipedia (and still exists over in Wikipedia with much the same content), would anyone object if I attempt a complete rewrite (i.e., start over)?

My German sandbox page is a very rough draft (not proofed and needed much more) of what I have in mind for the rewrite. Some of the existing article's sections could become different articles in their own right if we don't want to lose that information.

One beef I have about it as it stands is that its too much like a linguistics textbook. One can go out and buy those. I think we should try to give the big picture here, and then refer people to other places for the gory details.

What do you all think? May I tackle this article? Will anyone be offended if I archive what's here and, well, start over?Pat Palmer 13:05, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

I think that you should use {{speedydelete}} in this article. - Versuri 13:20, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

I decided to go for it. Just started the rewritten article and am trying to get it correctly "cleaned" and categorized.Pat Palmer 14:49, 3 April 2007 (CDT)

German as Dutch

The paragraph about the origins of Dutch seems to be saying that Dutch is basically German. This is likely to be a rather controversial statement, and I'm not sure it's linguistically valid: one could just as easily argue that German is Dutch. Perhaps needs a rethink. John Stephenson 05:02, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

This appears to be something of a controversy; I have already heard from one other person (who is Dutch) objecting to the article, so I will reword it. Just to clarify in advance, however, I intend to claim (and defend if necessary) that from the viewpoint of comparative historical linguistics, there is no distinction in the dialect continuum between the regional Germanic dialects which now lie in the country of Germany and those which lie in the westerns reaches of The Netherlands. This is in fact corroborated at the following website: http://www.ned.univie.ac.at/publicaties/taalgeschiedenis/en/ from a university. Please click on section 6 "19th and 20th century" for subsection "Dialects" and scroll down to the fourth from last paragraph, which states: "The demarcation between Dutch and German dialects is made on the basis of the standard language spoken in the region concerned. Venlo dialect is regarded as Dutch because the inhabitants of Venlo use Dutch in school and in "official" situations; the language of Krefeld on the other hand is treated as a German dialect because High German is the overarching standard language there." Historically from a linguistics viewpoint, the dialects of Dutch-speaking regions are within the same dialect continuumas the various regional Germanic dialects which lie across the river in Germany. The Dutch dialects, however, are in a continuum with the various regions inside Germany; these are called "West Germanic". English is theoretically in the same continuum, but it diverged considerably more from the dialects now within Germany than those in Dutch territory did. This is just a linguistic phenomenon, and not a political one, and I will try to rewrite that part of the article shortly.Pat Palmer 13:33, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

Okay, I've changed it; I think this makes the article much better, and I really appreciate the feedback.Pat Palmer 13:33, 4 April 2007 (CDT)

Dutch = German? NO WAY

This not only is not true as can be seen by the differences in grammatic rules, but also from a historical point of view. German and Dutch have a common ancestor: Mittel Deutsch or Dietsch (guess where Dutch came from) but apart from that the languages developed in totally different ways - mainkly because Germany didn't exist other than as a collection of earlships and kingdoms contrary to the netherlands where a more centralized government, or trade center in the 15th and 16th century, became important. By far more important than the 'peasants' that called themselves germanes. To state Dutch is a German dialect means you know little about the gammar of both languages - since they are rather different. It however is correct to state they have a common ancestor but developed differently. Robert Tito |  Talk  09:13, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Robert, I know you don't like this concept, so I documented it with what I consider to be reliable sources, and I tried to speak very carefully. So please let's just drop it. I am not saying (and I even included a disclaimer) that Dutch is German. We are violently in agreement.Pat Palmer 17:38, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Please reread the section. It think the article does not say what you think it is saying.Pat Palmer 17:40, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Relative ease of learning German

While a consensus exists on the view that similar languages are broadly easier to learn - because there's less to be done - I am not at all sure about some of the material in this passage and the previous one about active word-building, specifically the idea that German kids can learn quicker through compounding. For example, how would they *know* that Handschuh means glove, and not hand-shoe (a shoe that for some reason you put on your hand). Consider that you may be using your adult knowledge of the world to reject this interpretation, because children don't necessarily know that shoes are not for hands. (To digress: do native German speakers take the view that there is no fundamental difference between shoes and gloves, because they both contain Schuh?) Is there any research on this? John Stephenson 05:23, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

I did think about where my information came from. First, I taught German to English speakers for about 4 years, so some of what I wrote is based on my own experience of learning German as an adult and then teaching it to quite a few people later. Second, I recall reading about some studies on this somewhere, but that was some years ago, and I don't remember where. I will try to look into sources when I can. I think it might have been more a cognitive science source than a linguistics one. I only have university library access for a few more weeks (due to a course I'm teaching later this summer) but I will try to follow through. I appreciate your comments. Please don't remove the material just yet; let me see if I can dig up any useful sources.Pat Palmer 09:44, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Pat, something that came as strange is the following. If german is easy to learn for english native speakers the reciproke should be valid as well. Not the case. Since the structure of the languages are totally different speaking german on a high academic level is very hard, specially for english native speakers. Add to that the possibility to creat =e words on the fly by combining two independent nouns into a new word with a new meaning, as well as the fact that german, as well as dutch, use words that get their meaning only, and not before, in the context of a sentence - I fail to see where the easy comes from. Contrary I would rather say: see how a german native speaker speaks english and writes english and you no doubt will agree to that. Easy to learn, maybe up to the level of 10 year olds but beyond no, I strongly disagree there. Und daß nicht nur wegen meine Kenntnissen der Deutsche Sprache. Robert Tito |  Talk  10:03, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Robert, I'm afraid I don't agree with "the reciprocal should be the case". English is notoriously difficult for non-native speakers due to its huge vocabulary and odd spellings/pronunciations from many languages. German, on the other hand, has a relatively small vocabulary, and phonetic spelling. I've learned French, German, Spanish, Russian, Latin (and studied a few other languages), and I promise you that German is the easiest of all languages for native English speakers to learn, at least with good teaching and real practice it is. I've also taught German to English speakers for 4 years. I am looking for some sources to support my opinion, however.Pat Palmer 17:22, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Standarddeutsch

Es gibt KEIN WORT das so verwendet wird. As in standdarddeutsch is an invented word without ANY significant meaning. Germans know only Hochdeutsch (alsdo known as Hoch Deutsch) and dialect versions. Hoch in this way is the standard German, So please remove standarddeutsch as it is non-existent. Robert Tito |  Talk  09:57, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

I agree, but was not going to say anything because my knowledge of German dates back about 15 years. I thought maybe some new movement had come along. I'll go make the change now.Pat Palmer 17:06, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

compoundwords

As example can be used: Eisenbahnknotenhinundherschieber, yes it is a real word, and I leave it to the investigative mind to discover its meaning. Compound words - as they also exist in the Netherlands, become part of the standard and official dictionary after (generally) 6 years. During these 6 years a word must still be actively used by newspapers and other sources, spoken language included. After that period these words are part of the official dictionary. This has for instance lead to the addition of very common english words as sh*t, f*ck as part of the official dutch language, similar situations have happened in Germany. (By the way these words are not considered "rude" but at most not smart to use as these are borrowed words from another language.) Robert Tito |  Talk  17:06, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

That's a great example of a long word (initially intimidating to English speakers because of its sheer length). But with a minimum of training, an English learner can soon learn to discern that it means "a thing in a railroad track that shoves connections back and forth" (at least I think that's what it is, out of context). In English we simply say "switch", a word which gives no such graphic indication of why it's needed as the German equivalent. Great example! I remember having to ask what the heck is a switch in a railroad, and why is it needed, etc. A German kid would not need to ask.Pat Palmer 17:29, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

ambiguity of words

The possibility in german for words to get their meaning ONLY in the proper context IS COMPLETELY opposing this. You can't understand the german glove compartment without the car, you don't know of somebody it the student or the teacher until the context is clear. This remark about easy to learn because the regularity also is disputable due to the vast amount of exceptions, and when I mean vast I mean tremendous amount. This is contrary to English where the regularity by far outnumbers the German's. The only problem that remains is the huge dictionary of the English language, active and actual are somewhat over 900k words, compared to approximately 500k words in German, excluding compound words. Robert Tito |  Talk  17:14, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Title of this article

I wonder if this article should not be titled Germanic languages or German dialects. The article that goes under this title should, I think, concern what most people understand "German language" to refer to: Hochdeutsch. Alternatively, we could use "German language" as a disambiguation page, with one page pointing to an article about Germanic languages/dialects and another to Hochdeutsche.

This is all unless the article is planned to be expanded with a lot of info about Hochdeutsch. --Larry Sanger 17:21, 7 May 2007 (CDT) (who lived in Muenchen for six months...)

I don't think it should. Most English speakers have no idea about the dialects; they think all German speakers are able to understand each other when they are 4 years old, as English speakers mostly can (with some obvious exceptions--perhaps there are sufficient differents in British, Indian and American English that children cannot immediately intercommunicate). It is important in any discussion of "German language" intended for English readers to hit them over the head with the dialect thing, because it is simply not well understood. Yes, there are dialects in other languages (Spanish) but they have quite different historic and political ramifications.Pat Palmer 17:26, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

I think Hochdeutsch could get a subarticle.Pat Palmer 17:31, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Switzerland, Luxembourg etc

I removed Switzerland and Luxembourg because (I learned the hard way from angry emails) some people don't like German to be mentioned as an official language of Switzerland unless French is also mentioned (and, is there a third one too?). I think too much detail takes away from the big picture. That kind of detail belongs in an almanac, possibly. If someone wants it here, please consider placing it lower in the article in its own section so we can take plenty of space to explain all about it.Pat Palmer 17:35, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Robert's footnote about oberflaechlich

This is Robert Tito's footnote which I am placing here temporarily. Perhaps some version of it belongs in the text proper (or something) but it seems too long for a mere footnote. The footnote seems to make multiple points which we might want to address. To preserve his words for now, here they are:

The word ''superficial'' is however appropriate to explain the active 
word building mechanism in the [[English language]]. An alternative 
German translation of "superficial" is ''vordergründig'', basically 
meaning "ostensible". However, the German word ''Vordergrund'' has 
the English equivalent of "foreground", which itself can be learned 
via active word-building by native English speakers, although the 
English word ''fore'' has become quite rare nowadays. (But the 
mechanism still commonly applies for other words like ''background''.) 
So many languages (including German) come with a mixture of active 
word-building and a second basis of fixed words that derive from 
other languages like Latin (e.g. ''Dichter'' and ''Diktator'', 
from ''dicere''; English: "poet" and "dictator"), Greek (e.g. 
''Symbol''), French (e.g. ''Friseur''; English: "hairdresser") or 
Arabic (e.g. ''Arsenal'').

Afrikaans

Similarly, in South Africa which was formerly a Dutch colony, a dialect called Afrikaans arose which incorporated many new words and concepts from South African native tribes. Is a quote from the article. Unfortunately the author didn't realize his qualification of Afrikaans as a German dialect is inproper because at the time of the Dutch settlement German as a language didn't exist. Contrary Afrikaans is a dialect of Dutch, as is Dutch Pensilvanian. By the way (off topic) it was one vote difference that gave the americans the english language as default, it might very well have been dutch becuase these were the two languages spoken at that time (a time where Germany only existed as a couple of small empires without any structure at all. For that reason alone calling Dutch a dialect of German is totally besides the truth. Linguistically spoken there are many similarities, as they both have a common ancestor. But to say Dutch is a dialect of German is like saying French is a dialect of Italian. Robert Tito |  Talk  17:39, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

OK, Robert, you now "own" this article, since you think you know so much better. I am now removing it from my watch list.Pat Palmer 17:54, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

this is rediculous, I try to make points of historical data - if you have forgotten these facts fine. Would you say Finnish is a dialect of Hungarian because they both have a common denominator? (or visa versa) I don't think that is appropriate to do. Robert Tito |  Talk  17:57, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

English and Spanish, vs. Dutch and German

I'm in the process of bowing out of here to let others finish this article, but I thought it worth trying to explain why I wrote it as I did. English and Spanish have existed in approximately the same written form for hundreds of years "as a single language" that all its common speaker base shared. German and Dutch have not. Both are "official", created languages, amalgums from multiple local dialects within the Germanic language continuum. High German (the official language) is a very new thing (about 100 years old, maybe a little more); I think Dutch (the official language) is about the same age, but I'm not sure exactly. Both are artificial amalgums; local people still speak their NOT-mutually-intelligible dialects as children, then learn the official language for school and public intercourse. This is quite different from English, so English speakers learning about German need to have this explained. Perhaps I emphasized the matter too hard, but to remove it is doing a disservice to readers, in my opinion. Having taught German to Americans, I understand all too well the simplistic misconceptions Americans have about "German" as a language. They think "High German" means the best accent; it is much different from having a "correct" accent. Most don't know that Yiddish and Pennsylvania Dutch are dialects of the same continuum, so much so that a student of Germanic linguistics can pretty easily read all the languages in the West Germanic continuum (including Dutch, Yiddish, Afrikaans, and its local dialects). I know this first hand, as will any student of Germanistik or Germanic linguistics. General linguists may not, because it may not be their area of interest. And yet, most of those local West Germanic dialects are NOT mutually intelligible--they are like different little languages, in a sense. Hochdeutch or High German or Standard German, whatever you call it, is still a trade language and a literary language, but not exactly a spoken language in the sense that English is.Pat Palmer 18:54, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Pat, many thanks for your apt outline of the issues here. I would only add that "High German" in the linguistic sense is indeed as old as "Low"; what you're describing here is the association of High German with a particular "official" version of "German" nationality and speech, and the sometimes snobby attitude that still clings to it. English, for better or worse, is closer to Low German dialects such as Frisian, and then of course a funny thing happened on the way to its being "English", which was its mingling/mangling with Norman French. I think English speakers have also experienced attitudes about "proper" dialects (even though in the UK, Estuary English is staging a comeback against the old U-speak) -- it's just that there are not many dialects of US and UK English that are called another language.

Russell, I agree that the "High German" vs. "Low German" dialect divisions have existed for centuries. Hochdeutsch the official German language (also called "High German" by English speakers) is a quite different usage; this so-called standard German has not existed for centuries; it began in the early 1800's influenced by Grimm's fairy tales, and was "codified" somewhere around 1900. People are not taught it from birth (usually); they have to learn it. They learn a dialect instead, and learn official German later on. Official German speakers generally cannot understand spoken dialects without training.Pat Palmer 20:08, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

I do agree that German remains a little easier for English speakers to learn (I learnt it in a Lutheran school in the US via a stick-figure book, See It and Say It in German), in part because the top decile of the 10% most frequent words in English is dominated by Anglo-Saxon roots).

I am sorry that misunderstandings have led you to feel a less-than-friendly association here -- it's just that what speakers, and even teachers of a language know, and how they describe that knowledge, can differ from what linguists know, and that both can at times be at variance with the linguistic boundaries drawn by modern nation-states!

I dread to think what we will encounter when we get to Norwegian and Swedish, which are very nearly the same language as well! Cheers to all. Russell Potter 19:04, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

try to conform to historical data: Dutch is an official language as of the rise of the V.O.C., the merchant fleet supported by the Netherlands that dominated the world around 16th and 17th century. The Netherlands then were known as Holland. And unfortunately people in Holland spoke Dutch. They still do, and I think I know as I am Dutch and I live in Holland. The language was at that point standard. The country now known as Belgium as well as Luxemburg were all part of Holland, and not before the middle iof the 19th century Belgium gained its independende as souverein state, where as Luxemburg still is a Duke-dom (or what you may call it). The grand duke of Luxemburg reigns in name of the Dutch monarchy. Cheers, a little history sometime is in place. Robert Tito |  Talk