Learning a language that's very similar to your own...how does that work?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been wondering about something of late, and thought I’d throw it open to European 'dopers, especially those who speak the Germanic languages.

My first language was English, and I grew up on a media diet of Canadian, American and British TV and movies. While I know there are regional differences, English is largely the same everywhere. Unless it’s heavily infused with slang, I can basically understand it when I hear it.

A couple of years ago I started studying German for a planned trip that was scuttled by the pandemic. And, while I did know that there were a number of regional varieties, I figured it was mostly the same throughout Germany, until my teacher made a point of dialects. We did learn various different greetings and whatnot, as in “The Austrians will say goodbye like this, but this phrase is more common in Switzerland…” I’ve previously studied Welsh, and in class we learned both “northern” and “southern” Welsh (there are more dialects than that, obviously…every village has its quirks that distinguish the locals from the heathens on the other side of the dyffryn) but someone from Cardiff won’t find a local in Llandudno incomprehensible.

Long story short, my question is: do Germans from any region have to actually study a different dialect to learn it? If someone from Hamburg gets transferred for work to Vienna, does he have to do a night school class to learn Austrian German?

And, related to this: I know from being a total amateur linguist that some other northern Germanic languages are sort of on a continuum. For example, Danish and Swedish are similar, more so the closer you get to their connecting bridge(s?). I loved the show “The Bridge” which was set in Copenhagen and Malmö, and the Danish and Swedish characters communicated really without any hurdles. Watching the credits of the show, I’d see that some technical credits used the same word, and others would include both, separated by a slash, and one version would have maybe one more letter or an accent, so practically the same.

Question #2, then: in Sweden, does one take a class in Danish, or vice versa, for purposes of work or travel? And just generally to Europeans, especially the ones who can hit two or three other countries with a rock from their backyard, how do you pick up the languages of your neighbors, when they’re more or less mutually intelligible?

2

Native German speaker here. Different dialects of German can be mutually unintelligible if they’re thick and heavy, but familiarising yourself with another dialect than your own is still not the same thing as learning a new language; it’s more a matter of getting used to unfamiliar ways of pronouncing the same words, plus some vocabulary idiosyncracies.

Generally, the dialects form a spectrum or continuum: The dialect in one region is similar to that in a neighbouring region, but less similar to that in a region further away, while the dialect of a region in between those two might have similarities to both. My native dialect, for instance, is Bavarian Swabian; it’s noticeably different from Baden-Württemberg Swabian (Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg being two neighbouring states of Germany among which the historical region of Swabia is split), and it is even more different from the stereotypical Bavarian that people know. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t have a problem understanding someone speaking either of those other dialects unless it happens to be a person who speaks the dialect in a particularly thick and heavy way (which tends to be more common in rural areas). Someone from the north of Germany, where very different dialects are spoken, might have a harder time understanding things, but in communication with such a person people would take care to moderate their accents. Conversely, I might have more trouble with a north German dialect than someone from another part of northern Germany. If you move to another part of Germany with a different dialect, you might, over time, acquire some of the peculiarities of that dialect simply by being exposed to it, without noticing; it’s not the same thing as learning an entirely new language.

Swiss German has a reputation for being particularly difficult and very different from other dialects; so Germans moving to Switzerland might be challenged a little at first. Then again, people around them would tone down their Swiss accents towards them a little, so it would normally work too. If your native dialect is similar to Swiss (which is the case for Swabian), you’d have a head-start compared to someone from another part of Germany.

Vocabulary is another matter. Austrian German has a range of words (mostly for food) that are peculiar to it and not used in Germany (except perhaps for parts of Bavaria), so these are words you would need to memorise. You wouldn’t study them in classes, however; you’d pick them up as you go along, memorising a new word as soon as you come across one.

3

Also, generally, dialects in Germany are getting weaker and converging, up to the point that people are worried they might disappear and have started to set up campaigns to preserve them. It’s mostly an influence of modern mass media, which almost exclusively operate in Standard German.

4

When I lived in Norway, we had only over the air TV. We got one or two Norwegian channels, and two Swedish ones. One of the Swedish shows was the only daily kids’ show. So Norwegian kids grew up hearing Swedish from a young age.

There are both differences in pronunciation and in vocabulary. Danish is closer in vocabulary, due to Danish influence in creating written/standardized Norwegian (Bokmål), but there is a Norwegian dialect that is closer to “authentic” Norwegian (Nynorsk) which is being intentionally integrated into the standardized version taught in schools.

So to answer your question more directly, those three Scandinavian languages are generally already very close to mutually intelligible, and exposure gets you most of the rest of the way.

5

Huh? I had to turn on subtitles watching Billy Elliot, and extreme Australian or Scots accents can be unintelligible.

I presume most people you would encounter would know the central version of the language and be able to sound pretty close to that if they try, and at least have a grasp of what others say. Anyone grasps what “G’day mate” (“Gud-die, mite”) means. or “Cheerio” from context, there may be confusion about petrol or the boot of the car… but generally, the language works. I gather the advent of mass media has made a lot of this sort of more centralized language understanding possible - we recognize English or Southern USA or Australian accents, but we all understand each other, especially hearing it. I imagine German, for example, has a more limited range of users and so this effect may be more pronounced?

6

Both the original Mad Max and chunks of Trainspotting were re-dubbed for American release. There are DVDs/BluRays of Mad Max that give you the option to hear the original Aussie track.

I’ve also heard that Quebecois films are often subtitled when they play in France. Technically, proper Parisian French is what’s taught in Quebec elementary schools, but the languages did diverge a few hundred years ago and the differences are striking. It’s partly a class thing as well: when Denys Arcand made “Decline of the American Empire,” he deliberately set it amongst a group of university professors in Montreal, as they would by nature speak a more educated, higher-class French, and the movie would thus travel better.

The Scandinavian question is particularly interesting to me because I was placed in French Immersion when I was five, and true to the name, I virtually never heard English in school from that point on, and the teachers would more or less forbid it being spoken in class. I just imagine something like that doesn’t work among languages that are definitely different but still closely related. How can the Danish teacher tell if her students are sneaking in some Swedish when talking amongst themselves?

7

The number of speakers (both native and second language) of German is lower than in English, of course, but the diversity of dialects is quite pronounced. That’s because for most of its history, Germany did not have a centralised government; it was governed decentrally by regional rulers, and as a consequence, the language got standardised later than other European languages where the dialect of the respective capital emerged at an earlier time as the standard of the entire language and was then exported to the colonies. For part of the history of German as a language, even neighbouring vernaculars such as Dutch or Luxembourgish would have been considered dialects within the overall German dialect spectrum rather than separate languages, until the establishment of nation states in these countries led to a separate standardisation in speech and writing. But even today there are regional dialects in parts of Germany bordering these countries that are still relatively close to their languages.

8

Are you talking about within a Scandinavian country? I’d be surprised to learn that there were classes in any Scandinavian country teaching the language of another of those countries.

But, I also think that hearing someone speak Swedish in Danish class would be very noticeable.

Anecdote: My Norwegian is rusty, but I lived there for years as a child, and I studied Norwegian in college. So, it comes back when I hear it.

I watched The Restaurant, a Swedish series, recently, with my spouse, with English subtitles. I understood most of the dialog, and would sometimes point out where the subtitles were different from what was said. But it definitely sounds Swedish. At one point, a new character shows up, and as soon as she spoke, I knew she was Danish. It just really stands out. I mean, imagine if you were teaching an American accent class, and someone started speaking in their native Scottish English. It’s at least that noticeable.

9

A number of years ago, in anticipation of my trip to Vienna, I took a course in German. When I arrived in Vienna, I discovered that everyone could understand what I was saying, but I couldn’t understand a damn thing said to me. It seemed the German I learned was what they spoke in Berlin. I was tempted to quote JFK, and proclaim, “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

10

That’s the crux of my question exactly. I’m just fascinated as to how people learn a language that’s very close but still totally distinct from their own. As a native English speaker this hasn’t come up at all for me.

Jumping away from the Germanic languages, a friend of mine is from Bosnia-Herzegovina, and speaks Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian (in addition to English, French and German). I’m very envious at her skills but at the same time, those first three are (I think) largely dialects of the same general language. So how she learned the distinctions is fascinating to me.

11

Like this? :slight_smile:

12

As a little aside to that, the German you were taught in the course was most likely the standard variety, and according to common lore in Germany, the city or region whose dialect is closest to Standard German is Hanover. Berlin has a distinctive regional dialect which even has, traditionally, some grammatical differences (such as a frequent confusion of dative and accusative).

13

Oh god…cases! The thing that terrifies me most about learning other languages. I lucked out with Welsh, as I think it’s the only Celtic language that doesn’t use them. But German with its four, Latin with its six, Georgian’s got seven, Hungarian’s got seventeen or so…nightmarish. High Valerian has ten. A fictional language, and the linguist who made it up gave it ten gorram cases. First consonant mutation in Welsh was a snap compared to trying to parse the accusative (who’s accusing who?) and the nominative (what are we counting?) and the genitive (stay out of my pants!) in German.

14

Yes, the southern Slavic languages are essentially a transition across half a dozen countries, and are mutually intelligible to a high degree. Before the dissolution of Yugoslavia my cousins [Serbo-Croatian native speakers] studied Macedonian and Slovenian in school, although it was more focussed on literature and arts in those languages, in the same way that studying English at school is different to learning English.

Since the break-up the different nation states have tried to formalise their languages by emphasising their linguistic differences from the other, not really at all different, neighbours. One side-effect is they strongly encourage publication in national languages, and a robust book industry is never a bad thing.

But we all know several closely related languages [polite conversation, speaking up, speaking down, informal etc], and have no trouble switching between them once we know how to read our surroundings and audience. Its no different knowing different dialects - you decide which is the right word for cheese knife based on context and audience.

15

If she means spoken Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian then it’s not terribly meaningful - they are mutually intelligible languages. Serbian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet though (like Russian) so that would be somewhat more impressive.

I was recently subtitling Der Pass, in German for Germany, and the German broadcasters requested two sets of subtitles - one in Austrian, and one in German. Our team all thought the request for German was unhelpful, because Germans would understand all the Austrian subtitles, and it provided flavour between the characters (it was kinda the point of the show). But I guess some Germans needing subtitles for the Austrian characters is similar to some Americans needing subtitles for Trainspotting.

When I went to Vienna, I had a crisis of confidence about my German, because some staff there would hear my accent and almost react in an angry way. According to a German friend it’s nothing to do with my German skills exactly, but that I speak distinctly like I learned my German in Berlin (not Hochdeutsch, and definitely not proper Berliner Deutsch, but you can easily tell where I learned the language), and there’s basically huge amounts of snobbery from Austrians towards north Germans.

16

Serbian is digraphic — both alphabets are used, Serbian Cyrillic and Serbian Latin. Official documents are in Cyrillic, but you’ll find both alphabets in use in the country.

17

I wasn’t sure - was kinda hedging my bets on there being something slightly impressive in knowing those three languages. Though TBH even that wouldn’t be hugely impressive because it’s fairly straightforward - it’s not like learning to read Arabic or Urdu, let alone Chinese.

18

Yeah, the Austrians (especially the Viennese) call us “Prussians” (which in this circumstance means everybody north of the river Main) “Piefkes”. The loud, arrogant and boasting Prussian is as much a cliché in Austria as the loud, arrogant and boasting American outside of the US.

19

Yeah, picking up Serbian Cyrillic is pretty easy – it’s almost a one-to-one correspondence (the only “exception” I could think of is some Cyrillic characters map to digraphs in the Latin), and if you know your Greek letters, you’re practically halfway there. I spent several months in Western Slavonia a little bit after the war in '96 and we dealt with Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks (when we went down into Bosnia). Those languages/dialects were mutually intelligible, although there were dialectal differences among them. (e.g. if you said “kruh” or “hleb” for bread; “što” or “kaj” for what, whether you added a j after certain vowels or not, etc.) Slovenian was different enough that it took a little more work to understand (I spent a month there), but Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia were all very close, so much so that I wouldn’t consider them separate languages myself, but there are nationalist reasons for each nation to call it a language and not a dialect of Serbo-Croatian (or Croat-Serbian.)

20

TBH I’m more flattered than anything else, given that I haven’t been to Berlin - or Germany - since 1996. I’ve always expected that I’d sound like an ordinary British person, but I guess somehow the accent just stuck. (Other German friends in the UK have commented on it).

If and when I go to Berlin again, I bet they won’t think I talk like a local.