itz... ze germanz...

any student of the german language will surely be pleased to see that PLATT-DEUTSCH (low german dialect) is a alive and well in the internet. here is an example : "Bün ut all' de Wulken fulln, as ik köttens in 't Internet mien Gästbook afropen hebb. Reinhard F. Hahn, Sprookwetenschuppler an de Universität in Seattle, harr mien Vertelln öber Perfesser Agathe Lasch in't Ingelsche öbersett un op mien Homepage sett. " hbg

hamburger

Kinners, nee! Dat daut mi wunnern, plattdütsch in Seattle. Wat et niet al giv! [Of dat dat Gör verstat?]

ze jermanz
walter : if you have some time to spare , have a look at the platt-site of prof. schmidtkes, oklahoma state university. it's a lot of fun. hbg ... www.osu-okmulgee.edu/faculty_and_staff/carsten_schmidtke/platt.htm

Dank ok, hamburger: bookmarked.

Walter, I understood what you wrote, but Hamburger - I am lost there...

I have a friend who was born in Paraguay. His family had moved to Paraguay I don't know when. Some if them - including my friend of course - moved back to Germany about 30 years ago. They still speak platt in the family. Very strange - especially since they speak swabian in normal life...

What Walter wrote comes pretty close to dutch.
"Wat et niet al giv" hahaha would you really say that? Or was it just fitting in this post, but nothing you would say in your daily life?
It sounds quite old fashioned to me, something mostly old people or people from the country would say.
I don't mean this in an offensive way by the way.

What is that??
A Wissenschaftler ok, but 'Sprook'?
That sounds like 'sprookje' (Märchen), but I guess he's not really a fairy-tale-scientist/academic...

Cockney, and heavily accented Northern English can be very difficult to understand.

Anyone seen the movie Snatch? Brad Pitt plays a gypsy whose speech is almost incomprehensible. He does seem to have a way with accents.

Wilso, yes, I saw Snatch. On DVD luckily. We turned on the English subtitles to have at least some idea what was going on. But a great movie! Brad Pitt really is amazing. Unfortunately, in Germany all the movies are usually dubbed so we get the accent thing only if we watch it on DVD in the English original version.

Would be -literally- tranlated into Dutch "en taal wetenschapper" ( a linguist)

Just a quick one - in Billy Elliott they speak Geordie, not Cockney, because they're from Tynesyde (near Newcastle) not East London.

I also found Brad Pitt almost incomprehensible in Snatch - that's what was intended, I suppose...he does come from the fringes of society, after all.

KP

funny
I read the same thing with french and german mixed a few years ago (and english and spanish mixed as well).

hi, urs53 ! i assume that you refer to the item i picked up from the university of seattle : "Bün ut all' de Wulken fulln, as ik köttens in 't Internet mien Gästbook afropen hebb. Reinhard F. Hahn, Sprookwetenschuppler an de Universität in Seattle, harr mien Vertelln öber Perfesser Agathe Lasch in't Ingelsche öbersett un op mien Homepage sett. " here is a try at translating it into "regular" german : "bin aus allen wolken gefallen, als ich vor kurzem im internet mein gaestebuch angeschaut (abgerufen) habe. reinhard f. hahn, sprach-wissenschaftler an der universitaet in seattle, hatte meine erzaehlung ueber professor agathe lasch ins englische uebersetzt und auf meine homepage gesetzt." does this come a little closer to the german language ? while i grew up in hamburg, i also spent a year in bavaria and a year in vienna during my "growing up" period. so i can understand german dialects reasonably well - some better than others. i also find that it is usually easier to read in dialect than keeping a conversation going in dialect (i can always re-read). over the years i have collected a number of books written in various german dialects and i enjoy reading them again from time- to- time. i enjoy reading "josef filsers briefwexsel' by ludwig thoma - re-reading it makes it even more enjoyable since i always seem to find just another little gem hidden in there. two other books by thoma : "altaich" and "krawall" i find easy to read since only a few of the sentences are written in somewhat of a dialect to add a little flavour to the stories. to jump to the other side of germany, i have the complete writings of "fritz reuter". i have to admit that even though i have had the books for a number of years, i still have not managed to finish reading them. i have particular difficulties with his poetry, such as "keen huesung' (loosely translated as "no house" or "no place to live" , i would think); it's a 100 page poem and after a few pages i usually quit, even though it is an absolutely wonderful tale. i have enjoyed reading his "doerchlaeuchting' ("durchlaucht" or "your highness"); i'd say it's perhaps somewhat like p. g. wodehouse's stories - real fun ! of course, i've got a fair selection of books written in the various variations of north-german "platt-deutsch" , such as "hamburger platt", "finkenwerder platt", "ditmarscher-platt" ... all having their little variations of the german language. finally i want to mention a book i picked up for one euro in a bargain bin last spring in germany. while it is not really written in "dialect" , it contains some real gems. the book is called "dr. adenauers gesammelte schwaenke". it was publishrd in 1966 by econ-verlag. just to cite one of the gems (for me anyhow) : having been invited to buckingham -palace by queen elizabeth, she inquired if he enjoyed the german wine (rheingauer) being served; adenauer answered : "your majesty, i will send you some". (in the text : the queen : "schmeckt ihnen der wein,herr Bundeskanzler ? ", adenauer sagte milde : "majestaet, ich schicke ihnen mal welchen. " that's what i call a polite answer. hbg ... walter : if you can find "dr. adenauers scwaenke" somewhere, i think you might enjoy reding them. it just a little 170 page book, easily read in an evening. since in the adenauer years i was not particularly interested in politics (i think girls and parties were much more fun !), i now find i can re-live my "wasted" youth without much trouble! hbg

Een taalwetenschapper... ah thanks, now I see the connection between 'Sprook' and 'spraak' (speech) (and also 'Sprache' (language)).

I saw Seven Years in Tibet on the German tv when I was in Berlin last year.
That was so funny! Brad Pitt suddenly had a different voice, crazy!
I wonder why they don't just put subtitles. They do that here and I think it's a good thing. You get used to the sound of different laguages (mostly english though) and you have the original voices.

A few days ago I saw a documentary on National Geographic about how the dutch use the wind for all sorts of things. Not a very exciting thing to make a documentary about but anyway...
There was this dutch farmer and he began to speak, then there was this english voice over it, to translate and then there were dutch subtitles cuz it was on tv here in holland.
It would have been so much easier if they had just put english subtitles in the first place!

Continuing the subtitles/dubbing debate...I'm lucky that most of my time abroad (for work) has been spent in Switzerland and (currently) Norway. In these countries they tend to subtitle.

In Switzerland - in both French and German (saves getting the dubbing "wrong" for one group).

In Norway - they speak such great English that most will understand nearly everything in the original, so subtitles are just additional help.

Having watched "The Simpsons" in German several times, it's always strange to find that the voices are so different, having become very used to the manner in which Homer says "D'oh" etc. Weird!

This is a rather annoying point, but is intended as constructive criticism. Hamburger - could you please use shorter paragraphs, as it will be much easier for your readership to pick up the sense of what you're saying. I liked your post but found it difficult to read, as it was so "dense". Recht vielen Dank!

Und jetzt, auf Deutsch, wunsch' Ich Ihnen alle "Schoenen Tag noch".

Bis bald

KuecheP

kitchenpete : thanks for your reminder "to keep it short" ! i guess i had firgatten the advice from our english-teacher : two or even three short sentences are better than one long one. don't hesitate to remind me if i slip ! they used to have reminders in the 'phone-booths in germany : FASSE DICH KURZ ! (keep it short !). hbg

D1Doris

About 150 million people speak German as first language - some more than Dutch -, and this seems to be an economic reason.

hahaha yeah about 100 million more

But I think putting subtitles is a lot easier, it doesn't have to be right with the mouth and some people can translate and type very very fast, they often put subtitle via teletext anyway, for deaf people...
It doesn't make sense...

D1Doris, I agree with you. But people are so used to dubbed films in Germany that they think it is way to difficult to watch the movie and read the subtitles at the same time.

Anyway, they were showing the Lord of the Rings - Return of the King in English in our movie theater on Wednesday night. I had a lot of fun!