We can do everything – except speak proper German! This is the slogan of the city Stuttgart, which lies in the South of Germany and is the capital of the federal state Baden-Württemberg – the Swabian heartland of the country. There are numerous dialects in Germany, some stronger, others less so. The Swabian dialect belongs to the former, and in addition is quite unpopular, if you believe the annual survey of the German population. Especially for Northern Germans, this South-German dialect is hard to bear, but perhaps only because they can’t understand a word of it! Swabian, just like Swiss-German, has its roots in the Alemannic language, which is why these two speech variants have a lot in common. Apart from its own Grammar (rare use of the imperfect tense, no genitive case!! A dream for German learners!), there are mainly differences in pronunciation between Swabian and Standard German. One feature of this Southern dialect are the nasal sounds, comparable with Portuguese and French. “Umlaute”, like ö and ä, hardly exist: König becomes Keenich, schön becomes schee. The ö-Umaut’ is replaced with an e and ü with an i. Ein Stück Fleisch then becomes a Schdick Floisch. The many diphthongs make the language sound very broad, e.g. die Mutter ist müde would be dia Muader isch miad. In addition, in the Swabian dialect, hard consonants are pronounced softly: p, t and k become b, d and g. Ein Vater becomes ein Vader and ein Socke a Sogg. At the same time, st becomes sch(d) and sp is pronounced schb, so the word “ist” (is) would be isch. Another feature which stands out are the many minimizations. Das Mädchen becomes Mädle, die Tür das Türle (or rather: Dirle). Lastly, there are numerous Swabian words which are very different from their Standard German counter parts. Who would have guessed, that a Mugg means eine Fliege (a fly), a Gugg eine Plastiktüte (plastic bag) and that in the Schwabenländle people don’t use the word arbeiten (to work) but schaffen? Other words, which Reigschmeckte (foreigners) would struggle with, are Breschdleng (Erdbeere strawberry), eischmoddza (einschmieren – to grease something), Ade (Auf Wiedersehen – Good bye) und fatza (reiβen – to break). Why don’t you ask your German teacher, whether they know the following words (unless of course I am your teacher, a born and bred Swabian) : Krumbiere / Veschbr / schwätza. In this spirit – Tschüssle and Ade! By Miss Koehnlein
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