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I know that there are several Deutsch speakers here who may be able to help me. I've been searching for information on the Dresden Dialect specifically for my german class. We were all supposed to pick a city to say where we are from (So we all aren't saying the same two or three cities), and I chose Dresden. Loving languages, I decided that I'd try to learn a little of the dialect. Do any of you have any info on pronunciation, grammar differences, or some vocab?

Wikpedia has the following to say about the main dialects of Saxony, where Dresden is located:

The most common patois spoken in Saxony are combined in the group of "Thuringian and Upper Saxon dialects". Due to the incorrect usage of "Saxon dialects" in colloquial language, the Upper Saxon attribute has been added to distinguish it from Old Saxon and Low Saxon. Other German dialects spoken in Saxony are the dialects of the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains), which have been affected by Upper Saxon dialects, and the dialects of the Vogtland, which are more affected by the East Franconian languages.

Upper Sorbian (a Slavic language) is still actively spoken in the parts of Upper Lusatia that are occupied by the Sorbian minority. The Germans in Upper Lusatia speak distinct dialects of their own (Lusatian dialects).

Of course, I have no idea what most of this means, except vaguely having heard about Sorbian as a minority language in the region.

Bad luck: Saxon is widely considered the ugliest form of German known. I once rode back to Berlin in a train compartment with three Saxon reservists; after less than an hour I was ready to stab both eardrums out.

But if you're determined, you can find a lot of good links on this page: http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~joyce1/diale ... sachs.html.

In a (sort of) unrelated note, what ever became of the dialects of the former eastern territories of Germany after WWII? Did they just die out after all the expelled Germans settled down in the west?

Cockroach wrote:In a (sort of) unrelated note, what ever became of the dialects of the former eastern territories of Germany after WWII? Did they just die out after all the expelled Germans settled down in the west?

That generation of speakers isn't dead yet. But, yeah, as far as I know, they aren't passing the dialects on to their children.

And not only did the refugees lose their own dialects but they also weakened existing dialects in places where they were resettled. The city where I used to live, Freiburg, accommodated several thousand East Prussians after WWII. The town dialect may have been on its way out already, but this pretty much sealed its fate at the hands of Standard German, since that was the only way for these two groups to communicate.

linguoboy wrote:Saxon is widely considered the ugliest form of German known.

And considering what the rest of German sounds like, that's saying something. Sorry, but I just couldn't fight the urge to say what I was thinking. I am only joking, of course.

Conversely, though, what is considered the most attractive dialect of German?

Eddy wrote:Conversely, though, what is considered the most attractive dialect of German?

Good question. Folklorically Hannover has the "purest" Standard German, but that's actually a myth because they don't have /s/ -> [ʃ] | #_ before plosives (a marked Northern colloquial feature). Seems to me it's much like Britain, where the rural dialects are considered more pleasant-sounding than the urban ones, but which one you prefer will depend strongly on what part of the country you're from. (Germany like Britain also having a pronounced North-South divide.)

Edit: Here are the results of a 2008 poll conducted by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach (the German answer to Gallup). [Source] The question asked was, "Hier auf dieser Liste stehen verschiedene Dialekte--sind darunter welche, die Sie besonders gerne hören?" ("Here is a list of various dialects--are there some of them which you especially like to hear?") Respondents were asked to choose no more than three.

1. Bayerisch/Bavarian 35%
2. Norddeutsches Platt/North German Platt 29%
3. Berlinerisch/Berliner 22%
4. Schwäbisch/Swabian 20%
5 . Rheinländisch/Rhenish 19%
6. Hessisch/Hessian 13%
7. Sächsisch/Saxon 10%
8. Fränkisch/Frankish 10%
9. Pfälzisch/Palatinate 8%
10. Badisch-Alemannisch/Badener-Alemannic: 8%
11. Westfälisch/Westphalian: 7%
12. Mecklenburgish/Mecklenburgian: 6%
13. Ostpreußisch/East Prussian: 6%
14. Thüringisch/Thuringian: 5%
15. Saarländisch/Saarlander: 3%
16. Schlesisch/Silesian: 3%
17. Pommersch/Pommeranian: 2%

A number of things jump out at me. The first is that it would be interesting to see these percentages crosslisted with population figures for each area. That is, Bavaria [not all of which is Bavarian-speaking] is by far the most populous German state; more than one in seven Germans live there. That still means that more than twice as many Germans as live in Bavaria voted for Bavarian, but it does go some way to explaining how it took first place.

The second is I wonder how many Germans could even distinguish this many different dialects. IME, most people from outside Baden couldn't (or wouldn't) differentiate Badener from Swabian. So I wonder to what degree the low figures for dialects near the bottom of the list is a product of unfamiliarity. It's worth noting, for instance, that three out of the bottom five originate in territories that are no longer German. Pommeranian, for instance, is considered all but dead within Germany (though a living community of speakers persists in Brazil, of all places). When would the average German conceivably have heard it spoken? This hypothesis is at least partially borne out by responses to the complementary question. "Welche Dialekte hören Sie gar nicht gerne, welche mögen Sie überhaupt nicht?" ("Which dialects do you really not like hearing, which do you not like at all?")

1. Sächsisch/Saxon 54%
2. Bayerisch/Bavarian 21%
3. Berlinerisch/Berliner 21%
4. Schwäbisch/Swabian 17%
5. Thüringisch/Thuringian: 12%
6. Hessisch/Hessian 11%
7. Ostpreußisch/East Prussian: 9%
8. Norddeutsches Platt/North German Platt 8%
9 . Rheinländisch/Rhenish 6%
10. Schlesisch/Silesian: 6%
11. Pommersch/Pommeranian: 6%
12. Fränkisch/Frankish 5%
13. Pfälzisch/Palatinate 5%
14. Badisch-Alemannisch/Badener-Alemannic: 5%
15. Saarländisch/Saarlander: 5%
16. Mecklenburgish/Mecklenburgian: 4%
17. Westfälisch/Westphalian: 2%

Note how three of the top five (Bavarian, Berliner, Swabian) are the same in both lists--and in the selfsame order. Love or hate them, every German can identify them!

I would've liked to have seen a poll that first asked respondents how familiar they were with a given variety and then asked them to rate it. Comparing both lists, I'm left with the impression that most Germans simply have no opinion on Saarlander and Mecklenburgian dialects, perhaps because they've no real idea what they sound like. (Of course, a superior methodology would be to play dialect samples without identifying their origin and then asking for reactions, but then you're talking about an involved lab study rather than a simple poll.)

linguoboy wrote:(Of course, a superior methodology would be to play dialect samples without identifying their origin and then asking for reactions, but then you're talking about an involved lab study rather than a simple poll.)

this would also be interesting for AmE dialects, I think; in my experience, most people mentally conflate Southern and Southern Midland, which are *completely* different, and so go on about "those fuckin' rednecks" in the midwest or whatever and how they all sound like shit, while at the same time saying my (southern midland) accent is sexy

Nortaneous wrote:this would also be interesting for AmE dialects, I think; in my experience, most people mentally conflate Southern and Southern Midland, which are *completely* different, and so go on about "those fuckin' rednecks" in the midwest or whatever and how they all sound like shit, while at the same time saying my (southern midland) accent is sexy

I was thinking the same thing. I remember seeing something on a PBS programme where a dialect researcher was working his way through an Amtrak train, giving people pen and paper and having them draw freehand dialect maps of the US. In the process, they shared their value judgments of the varieties they enumerated. Unfortunately I can't recall his name.

Nortaneous wrote:

linguoboy wrote:(Of course, a superior methodology would be to play dialect samples without identifying their origin and then asking for reactions, but then you're talking about an involved lab study rather than a simple poll.)

this would also be interesting for AmE dialects, I think; in my experience, most people mentally conflate Southern and Southern Midland, which are *completely* different, and so go on about "those fuckin' rednecks" in the midwest or whatever and how they all sound like shit, while at the same time saying my (southern midland) accent is sexy

Conversely, I really am not aware of any value judgments of the sort of western Inland North dialects that I am familiar with, aside from them being familiar to people from the area where they are spoken, and that apparently people from Chicago think people from Milwaukee have "long vowels". People in Real Life who are not themselves from the area in which they are spoken do not seem certain just what to make of them, aside from that I myself have a "strong accent" that they otherwise cannot really place or comment on. (Many seem to confuse it with Canadian NAE varieties, actually...)