[tied] Re: Schöffe I

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@...> wrote:

>
> At 6:59:34 AM on Friday, May 13, 2011, Torsten wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> Some dialects are close or very close to the
> >> artificial-standard language, other dialects are so
> >> different, that one might be prompted deem them as
> >> separate languages. Thus, most of German- speaking people
> >> live in diglossies. In Switzerland and Luxemburg, they
> >> have 2 different artificial/Hochdeutsch German langauges;
> >> in Swiss TV, they use both intermittently, the one they
> >> share with Vienna and Berlin and the one which is sort of
> >> a common Swiss Alemanian dialect understood and spoken by
> >> everybody and understood to a considerable extent by
> >> South Germans, esp. those living in Allgäu, Württemberg
> >> and Baden, as well as by Tyrol and Vorarlberg Austrians.
>
> [...]
>
> >> Compared with these phenomena, English, esp. in North
> >> America, is a "homogenous"/"uniform" language, from coast
> >> to coast. :)
>
> > You can't have spent much time in the country there.
>
> Eh? He's quite correct. Indeed, the observation is a
> commonplace.

Tru, but it's more heterogeneous than most Europeans imagine. At least than I did.


Torsten