EFNIR: Büroservice Bergmann Blaufliessende Eisengallustinte

[LizEF]

7 hours ago, JulieParadise said:

Just claim to be speaking and writing German as they do in Switzerland. The Helvetians have abolished the ß = sharp s in their writing. Problem solved. 

I'm sure somewhere there's a purist or two having a conniption over this.

[yazeh]

And then there's the question of accent. Having seen a lot of World War II movies, German sounded harsh. Until I met an Austrian friend, from Graz. When she spoke German, it was like honey. It changed my perspective, that and the Lieder of Schumann

 

[LizEF]

31 minutes ago, yazeh said:

And then there's the question of accent. Having seen a lot of World War II movies, German sounded harsh. Until I met an Austrian friend, from Graz. When she spoke German, it was like honey. It changed my perspective, that and the Lieder of Schumann

Yes, the way a language is spoken, and the voice speaking it, can change everything.

[Mercian]

3 hours ago, LizEF said:

Hmm.  In English, the word "as" is pronounced "az" (voiced S sound); but "house" is an "s" sound, so we'll go with that.  (Now I'm wondering if British English pronounces "as" as "as"...  I can't remember, but I doubt it...  Back to German - got it.

Round by ‘ere, the word ‘house’ is pronounced ‘hows’ when one means the building in which a person might live, and ‘howz’ when one intends to convey it as the verb ‘to find a home for a person’.

 

I.e. “I live in this hows” or “we need to howz these refugees”.

 

The word ‘as’ is always pronounced as though it were spelled ‘az’.

 

We do not, I think, have three distinct ‘ess’ sounds - our Germanic cousins clearly have us outgunned, consonant-wise 😱😁

 

 

[Mercian]

2 hours ago, yazeh said:

And then there's the question of accent. Having seen a lot of World War II movies, German sounded harsh. Until I met an Austrian friend, from Graz. When she spoke German, it was like honey. It changed my perspective, that and the Lieder of Schumann

 

I once read (or saw?) that Arnold Shwarzenegger was puzzled to find that, when The Terminator was dubbed into German, a different actor had been hired to dub his character’s lines into German.

 

Allegedly, he pointed out that, as an Austrian, he could speak perfect German, and so would be happy to dub ‘himself’.

 

The source that I saw said that the other actor had been hired because, to many native Germans, the Austrian accent sounded somewhat ‘farmer-ish’ and ‘yokel-y’ - i.e. not in the least bit threatening.
Which was of course entirely inappropriate for a remorseless killing-machine.

 

A bit like dubbing it in to ‘Norfolk’ or ‘West Country’ for an English audience, or (maybe?) into ‘Amish’/Pennsylvania-‘Dutch’ for an American audience.

[Mercian]

11 hours ago, JulieParadise said:

Just claim to be speaking and writing German as they do in Switzerland. The Helvetians have abolished the ß = sharp s in their writing. Problem solved. 

This idea is genius!

 

I have read that some dialects of Schweizerdeutsch are deemed to be unintelligible by native Germans.

Is that right?

 

It wouldn’t surprise me if it were true. I mean, I live less than 30 miles from Walsall.

The dialect of the ‘yam-yams’ who live there is completely unintelligible to me if they are very excited, or drunk.

 

Some English folk have trouble understanding Scousers, Mackems, or Geordies.
But I find ‘yam-yams’ to be far harder to understand than any of those other groups, even though I grew up so much closer to them 🤷‍♂️

[LizEF]

Thanks, @Mercian!

 

21 minutes ago, Mercian said:

I.e. “I live in this hows” or “we need to howz these refugees”.

Good point - forgot the verb vs. noun differences - those are all over.

 

22 minutes ago, Mercian said:

We do not, I think, have three distinct ‘ess’ sounds - our Germanic cousins clearly have us outgunned, consonant-wise 😱😁

 

9 minutes ago, Mercian said:

I have read that some dialects of Schweizerdeutsch are deemed to be unintelligible by native Germans.

Is that right?

Funny story...  I visited London (decades ago, on vacation from Moscow) and went to McDonald's (what can I say, I was wanting something familiar and the one in Moscow didn't have chicken nuggets, and you had to stand in line for hours anyway)¹.  So, the young woman at the register took my order and asked me, "Do you want any [something]?"  I could not for the life of me understand [something].  I asked, "What?" and she repeated herself.  We did this like three times, me finally telling her I couldn't understand what she was asking.  Finally she pulled a box from under the register - it had the various sauces in it.  I had a good laugh - I think she was just annoyed.  I could not for the life of me understand the way she pronounced "sauce".  And, in theory, we were both speaking English...

 

¹When I discovered London had Dunkin' Donuts, it was like I had arrived in Heaven...  (In my defense, Moscow is quite a shock to someone who hasn't been further outside the US than Toronto...)

[LizEF]

17 minutes ago, Mercian said:

Some English folk have trouble understanding Scousers, Mackems, or Geordies.
But I find ‘yam-yams’ to be far harder to understand than any of those other groups, even though I grew up so much closer to them 🤷‍♂️

It seems very strange to me that in such a small country you have so many different dialects.  It's as if no one ever moves or talks to anyone more than 30 miles away, so language evolves over generations in small pockets...

 

I can understand every US accent I've heard - even Brooklyn and Boston (the deep south was never a problem to me).  I can only assume it's because we're more mobile, or somehow otherwise more exposed to each other, thus homogenizing our speech patterns more...?  (I'm sure somewhere there are isolated groups I haven't heard and wouldn't understand, but it sure seems like we don't have that issue as much as you folks do...)

[Mercian]

5 minutes ago, LizEF said:

Finally she pulled a box from under the register - it had the various sauces in it.  I had a good laugh - I think she was just annoyed.  I could not for the life of me understand the way she pronounced "sauce".  And, in theory, we were both speaking English...

😁

 

‘Sawssez’? Or ‘sossez’?

[LizEF]

Just now, Mercian said:

😁

 

‘Sawssez’? Or ‘sossez’?

I can't remember anymore - it was 1992...  However she pronounced it, it just wasn't getting through.

[Mercian]

2 hours ago, LizEF said:

It seems very strange to me that in such a small country you have so many different dialects.  It's as if no one ever moves or talks to anyone more than 30 miles away, so language evolves over generations in small pockets...

 

I can understand every US accent I've heard - even Brooklyn and Boston (the deep south was never a problem to me).  I can only assume it's because we're more mobile, or somehow otherwise more exposed to each other, thus homogenizing our speech patterns more...?  (I'm sure somewhere there are isolated groups I haven't heard and wouldn't understand, but it sure seems like we don't have that issue as much as you folks do...)

I think the, er, uniqueness of some our local accents can be explained as follows:

Generally, when/where local employment was easy to find, people stayed where they had grown up, married, and had kids there.

Which resulted in a myriad local accents/dialects developing.

E.g. my mum told me that, when she was a young girl, a person’s accent would enable you to identify where a person came from with sufficient precision to identify which valley within Yorkshire that they came from.

 

Interestingly (to me at least), the accents of Birmingham and the ‘Black Country’ (the ‘yam-yams’) have changed very little in the last six hundred years.

They both sound as though they are being pronounced in a ‘Minor key’, unlike every other accent in England.

 

Those two local accents are actually perceived as being signs of unintelligence. They are also both thought of as being very ‘working-class’.

Almost nobody here perceives those accents as being ‘euphonious’.

No women move in to those areas to marry the local men, and so the areas’ accents have never changed.

 

Similarly, ‘Cockney’ and ‘Scouse’ accents are perceived as being ‘dodgy’ (untrustworthy/criminal). So, one does not often find that cold-calling companies employ Scousers or Cockneys.
By contrast, ‘northern’/‘Yorkshire’ and Lowland-Scots accents are perceived as being ‘honest’.

 

Our accents are, nowadays, being smeared-together/crushed out/homogenised by TV.

I think that this is a regrettable development.

I do though recognise that I am am ‘outlier’ or ‘weirdo’ in this - I love the ‘music’ of our local accents, and I shall miss them when they have gone.

[Mercian]

16 minutes ago, LizEF said:

I can't remember anymore - it was 1992...  However she pronounced it, it just wasn't getting through.

I’d guess that she asked you “joo won enny sawssez wi vat?” 😉

[LizEF]

Fascinating stuff.  That whole "the past 600 years" thing might explain a lot...

 

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

Our accents are, nowadays, being smeared-together/crushed out/homogenised by TV.

I think that this is a regrettable development.

I do though recognise that I am am ‘outlier’ or ‘weirdo’ in this - I love the ‘music’ of our local accents, and I shall miss them when they have gone.

I'll bet a lot of folk who study language feel the same.  The UK must be a treasure trove for them.

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

I’d guess that she asked you “joo won enny sawssez wi vat?” 😉

[InesF]

On 4/6/2023 at 5:57 PM, LizEF said:

Which is the long way of saying, to a non-native speaker, almost every language is probably difficult.

Indeed, @LizEF, wise words! 

[InesF]

On 4/6/2023 at 7:46 PM, yazeh said:

Until I met an Austrian friend, from Graz. When she spoke German, it was like honey.

 

Some of the Austrian dialects are spoken like harmonic melodies.

[khalameet]

Thank you for reviewing my favourite ink. I run it almost constantly in a Montblanc 146 with a medium nib and use this pen for almost everything. The ink performs flawlessly in it.

 

Besides, Thomas/Thom, the creator of the ink, is a very kind and knowledgeable person.

[LizEF]

6 hours ago, khalameet said:

Thank you for reviewing my favourite ink. I run it almost constantly in a Montblanc 146 with a medium nib and use this pen for almost everything. The ink performs flawlessly in it.

 

Besides, Thomas/Thom, the creator of the ink, is a very kind and knowledgeable person.

You're very welcome!  I'll bet it's beautiful coming out of that MB.  And yes, Thom is very generous with his knowledge.

[inkstainedruth]

On 4/6/2023 at 1:46 PM, yazeh said:

And then there's the question of accent. Having seen a lot of World War II movies, German sounded harsh. Until I met an Austrian friend, from Graz. When she spoke German, it was like honey. It changed my perspective, that and the Lieder of Schumann

 

This is making me think of the story a friend of ours told when he was in the US Military, stationed in Germany.  Apparently he was in Military Intelligence, and part of his job was to hang around in bars (not in uniform) to pick up local chatter/gossip.  He was stationed in Bavaria someplace, and the locals just assumed that he was from a different part of Germany, where people spoke more "High German".... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[inkstainedruth]

On 4/6/2023 at 4:10 PM, LizEF said:

I can understand every US accent I've heard - even Brooklyn and Boston (the deep south was never a problem to me).  I can only assume it's because we're more mobile, or somehow otherwise more exposed to each other, thus homogenizing our speech patterns more...? 

Ironically, my husband had problems with the "locals" in southern Mississippi at the place he runs a food booth at not understanding HIM (he was born in the Pittsburgh area, but raised in western and central NYS) -- because they said he talked "too fast...".

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth