Bread’s an interesting one - the UK has widely differing terms for “bread roll” and people have not-actually-serious fights about the right term. But it’s an obvious dialect difference, otherwise it’d be difficult to argue verbally.
There are valid political reasons to count them as separate languages, and obviously the boundaries between language and dialect are always blurred, but I think most people from those areas know, in reality, that they are not actually speaking a distinct language. Being credited with speaking three languages when they’re so very, very close is not the same as speaking English, German and Spanish, and a world away from speaking Swedish, Chinese and Arabic.
Brazilian Portuguese is different enough from the Euro version to cause some comprehension troubles. Prior to posting in Lisbon, I had six months of Brazilian and was barely able to understand what was said in Lisbon. It’s primarily a pronunciation problem, as Brazilians have a lot of dge, ch, and schw sounds that you don’t hear in Portugal. And of course there are different idioms and slang.
Indeed. To me, it felt like speaking American English vs British English in terms of how close together the languages seemed to me. When we spoke to locals, we just said govorim malo vašim jezikom (“I speak a little of your language”) lest we make a faux-pas and say “I speak Croatian” to a Serb or vice versa. The politics of what you called the language was enough to avoid naming the language. (I grew up speaking Polish, so picking up just enoguh functional Serbo-Croat was pretty easy for me, but not good enough for me to identify whether someone was speaking Serbian or Croat without a “key word” like I mentioned above popping up.)
The most impressive I saw was when I lived in Budapest. There was a 6-year-old girl who was a Kosovar refugee. She spoke four very different languages: Albanian, Serbian, English, and Hungarian. She grew up with the first two, and the last two she picked up in one or two years living in Budapest with her mom. Kids are language sponges when they have to be.
Total sidebar…the great political writer P.J. O’Rourke passed away yesterday, and your observation reminded me of one of my favorite lines of his, in a dispatch from Russia. After his guide had obliviously said something shockingly racist, P.J. noted “He was too Russian to believe it was really okay for some people to go around being, you know, different from other people. This is a country that considers Warsaw an exotic southern city whose hot-blooded natives are not quite to be trusted.” I relayed that line to a Moldovan co-worker of mine and she totally agreed.
That’s something I’ve always wondered; in the German dialects upthread, how do they compare to say… American English vs. British English? Is it more like British English vs. Scots?
I mean, I’ve talked with all sorts of English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh people, and a handful of Aussies and Kiwis, and while we’ve had our “separated by a common language” moments, they’re usually pretty infrequent and pretty easily resolved. The only ones who were actually difficult to understand were some of the more rural people in Scotland, and I’m not entirely sure they weren’t speaking Scots anyway.
Yep - if you spoke only Polish you’d have some headway in speaking Serbian and Croatian, and in reading menus and the like, but you wouldn’t actually be able to have a full conversation. In 1996 I had a Croatian BF and I was living in Slovakia (in case anyone misreads, I do mean Slovakia, not Slovenia), and he could kinda make his way around a little bit by sort of speaking Croatian slowly and listening carefully, but he and they would usually then switch to school-learned Russian because that was easier.
That’s because Croatian and Slovak were definitely different languages. In Serbia, before the war, he’d had no problems.
Czech and Slovak were trying to be defined as separate languages when I lived there, but it seems like they gave up. I learned a little Czech before going (all forgotten now) and there was definitely a different rhythm to Slovak, but the written language was identical.
The rural vs. urban issue is a huge factor in dialect intelligibility, I’m sure. A friend of mine, born here in Canada, is of Hungarian ancestry. She speaks the language, but sadly said to me once that she doesn’t like to use it, as her family is from a part of the country that’s really way out in the boonies, and her dialect gives that away and makes her sound like a “hick.”
Yep. You can muddle through but the languages are pretty distinct, and there’s a good number of false cognates. I’d say upon disembarking in Croatia, without learning any Croatian and with my so-so, but birth-language Polish, I could tell what most conversations were about, but my actual understanding of spoken Croatian was maybe 15%. After three months, that was closer to 50%. The Polish and Slovak volunteers there picked up a solid proficiency with the local language within about six months. That said, the Slavic languages do seem to have a lot of overlap (along with the false cognates to trip you up and keep you on your toes.)
It’s interesting with Czech vs Slovak – I’ve always had an easier time understanding Slovak (via Polish) than Czech. I didn’t actually realize how close together they are. My father and many of his friends are from the Tatras/Southern Poland bordering Slovakia, so perhaps it is, as you say, the rhythm of the language that makes it more easily intelligible to me than Czech.
This is really for native German speakers to be answered, however in the Netherlands the situation is comparable IMHO. We have distinct dialects and even a seperate language (frisian) under our roof, and dialects are most certainly not mutually intelligible, at least not without significant effort.
Of course, there’s also a difference between dialect and accent. A Swiss person speaking Hochdeutsch is intelligible even for me, a non native speaker. Were this person to speak actual Schweitzerdeutsch, I wouldn’t understand them. Same as I can understand Dutch with a Flemish, Limburgish or Lower Saxon accent, but not the dialects spoken there, at least not automatically. For me, Afrikaans is easier than, say, Limburgish, and that’s because Afrikaans is largely derived from Zeelandic and Hollandic Dutch as spoken in the 17th century ,which is quite close to current Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands, or the "official Dutch ", comparable to the Queen’s English. This is also, generally speaking, the accent of the Randstad, where the biggest cities are and which is the region I grew up in and still live.
I had a colleague who grew up in Germany and left in 1939 at age 16 and spoke English for the rest of his life, including with his Sudeten German speaking wife. When he spent a years in Switzerland in 1965-66, it took most of the year before he was able to follow Swiss German. Now that may have been because all Swiss Germans also speak a standard dialect (they are forced to use it from third grade on) and may have switched to it automatically, but still he found it hard.
Once I had dinner with two other people. One was Serbian living in Philadelphia, where I grew up, the second was from Atlanta. The Atlantan asked the Serbian what was the difference between Serbian and Croatian. The answer was that it was less then the difference between Atlanta and Philadelphia.
On the subject of the Scandinavian languages, I recall one interesting thing. One of the Martin Beck mysteries by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo takes place on the bridge between Malmo and Copenhagen (or something like that). Anyway, a Swedish police chief and a Danish police chief who, knew each other from before had to give up the pretense that each understood the other’s language and speak English now that they had something serious to discuss.
I am aware of at least three varieties of English that I just do not understand. One is Cockney, the second is Barbadian, and the third is a dialect of highland Scots that I was assured was English and not Scots Gaelic.
Scots-English can be hard. I grew up with Scottish accents around me. Mrs Piper, also from Saskatchewan, grew up with German accents. When we went to Scotland and were going through customs off the plane, the customs guard said something to us. Mrs P just looked at me and said « What did he say? ». I said « He said we are to form a line to the left. » She just stared at me and said « I have no idea how you understood that. »
The award-winning Quebec movie “Mon Oncle Antoine” came out when I was in high school, and our French class went on a field trip to the local art cinema to see it. I still remember the opening lines:
[First worker]: “Heh Joe. Le boss…” (Subtitle: Hey Joe - the boss)
[Second Worker]: “Ah, il mange le rat.” (Subtitle: “Big shit.”)
It didn’t do much for our French comprehension.
An auspicious beginning for a nice Catholic high school class in the day. The highlight, however, was the preview for some obscure British movie, “And Now For Something Completely Different” featuring John Cleese in a two-piece bikini being roasted on a spit over an open fire, then the Hell’s Grannies, the mincing military parade, and finally, the Lumberjack Song.
My step-mother saw the “Mon Oncle Antoine” years later and chuckled at some of the language. “He basically told the uncle ‘Thou drunken fool’”
It depends on how heavy the dialect is. It’s not as if everyone from the same German region speaks the exact same way; some people have a thick dialect, for others it’s closer to Standard German with a little bit of flavouring from the dialect of that region in terms of pronunciation. People will also code-switch (if that word is applicable to dialects) depending on the counterpart - I will speak my Swabian dialect to my parents or friends I grew up with, but I will automatically switch to more Standard German when speaking to someone from another region (but I will still speak in a way that allows people to guess, at least roughly, which part of the country I’m from). If someone speaks thick dialect, that’s certainly similar to the English versus Scots thing in the sense that it sounds almost like another language. Where the dialect is less pronounced, it’s more like the British versus American English story: Clearly the same language with no intelligibility problem, but you can still tell where the person comes from.
Relevant anecdote - Czechs are amazingly and nonchalantly multilingual. Hitch-hiking there I was picked up by a Czech guy who tried to explain his job [selling lead for plumbing]. My rude Serbo-Croat couldn’t stretch to his Czech for technical terms, although it was similar enough for casual conversation, he had no English, but then without pausing for breath tried a few sentences of Polish, Russian, German and what I assume was Hungarian. When none of those worked he got serious and went ‘Latinsko P B’, which eventually made me recognise scientific notation for lead, and we could continue from there.
So many Czechs just switched into different languages in a heartbeat until they found something intelligible for the listener. It was a fantastic experience of intuitive multilingualism.
Well, I met an Indian (speaking standard British English) who said she had trouble understanding people in Atlanta, so it may have been the accent or something but you cannot categorically say there is no intelligibility problem. But, surely, we all agree that the formal written language, even something like America vs New Zealand, is not very far off at all. As for something like Scots or Frisian, it is not the case that they are trying but failing to write English.
Native Dutch speaker here. In my experience, local dialects are often hard to understand mainly because of pronunciation. Once you pick up how they pronounce words (which can happen fairly quickly if you live somewhere or visit an area for an extended period) it is easy to follow most of what is said. The next hurdle is idiom, specific words that do not resemble the words in the main language. But pronunciation is the main obstacle.
I do believe that people are less open to hearing different pronunciations. In the seventies there was a Dutch TV program (Van gewest tot gewest) that showed local Dutch people speaking in dialect, and I recall that it was not subtitled. When I saw it again ten years ago, there were subtitles.
On the other hand, you have variants such as Flemish which are easy to follow for ABN Dutch speakers, but often contain words which are not official Dutch or have a different meaning. They’re on the whole easy to understand, but it might be difficult to speak completely correctly as you would be inclined to use the Dutch words instead of the vernacular. I imagine that this is the same for switching. between U.S. and British English.
For related languages such as Frisian and German: it is much easier to learn those than a more distant language like France, as you can guess the meaning of most words by their resemblance to Dutch words. The hurdles in learning German for Dutch speakers are the differences in grammar (cases, genders etc.) plus the specific differences in vocabulary. Dutch speakers are prone to overconfidence, using Germanified Dutch words which have a completely different meaning in German than intended, with often hilarious results.
In conclusion: learning to understand a related language is easier than a remote language, although pronunciation may trip you up at first. Learning to speak the language well may be much harder as you may unwittingly rely on aspects of your native language when it is not appropriate.
Blast from the past . I remember that. I also remember we used subtitles later on with Flemish (Jambers), but that was because the accents were really thick.
Second your thoughts on learning dialect/pronunciation .
Sidetrack, but is there any Slavic language that is most mutually intelligible with other Slavic languages?
Like, if you wanted to learn a Slavic language with the intent of being able to understand as many of them as possible, is there an obvious choice of language?
The Scandinavian languages are not mutually intelligible without practice, which we got for free back in the day with limited non-Scandinavian media available, but even today I think someone moving from one country to the another will muddle through until they pick it up “naturally” rather than take a course. Norwegians generally have an easier time of it, as a wider variety of Norwegian dialects are used in media, priming people for coping with the, only marginally, larger differences moving across the border. Danes have the most trouble, and is also the language the rest of us find most difficult, due to how pronunciation has developed there. I’m not just ragging on the Danes for fun here. This is what scientific research on the topic keeps turning up.
. I remember that. I also remember we used subtitles later on with Flemish (Jambers), but that was because the accents were really thick.