For this project I visited five German cities: I travelled from Berlin to Dresden, Augsburg, Stuttgart, and finally Hanover. Below is a short description of how I traveled, what I encountered, and the general results of my study in each region.
In Berlin I tested my field methods and looked for my first locations. My good friends (with whom I stayed in the neighboring village of Neuenhagen) contributed the first few surveys. I looked around Alexanderplatz, with which I was familiar from my previous trip to Germany. I found it too busy and hectic, but on the other side of the Fernsehturm (TV tower) I found a park near a fountain of Neptune. This was an ideal spot, especially during public council meetings. On the second day I wandered into a courtyard that was part of the Humboldt University campus and passed out surveys to several college students. This is also where I obtained my first interview. I was rained out for a few days and spent the time at the Bodemuseum and the other museums in the Museuminsel and met a high school friend of mine who has an internship in Berlin. On the last few days I continued passing out surveys near the Neptune fountain (where I obtained a second interview), and finished up my survey on a sunny day in the densely wooded Tierpark.
Men and women of ages 22-80 were surveyed, with an average age of 41. Only 50% of respondents report that they spoke a dialect (all but one Berlinerisch), although 70% were born in Berlin and 90% live there now. Perhaps Berlinerisch is not spoken as much, or considered as full of a dialect (one respondent indicated as much). There may be a bias towards higher educated individuals in Berlin, as a third of the surveys came from university students, and higher education may have a detrimental effect on the number of dialect speakers.
Additionally, people often wrote that that they spoke no dialect, and then in parentheses conceded that they spoke a little Berlinerisch. This seems to indicate that Berlinerisch is not well thought of.
Only a few words were given over and over as prime examples of Berlinerisch: ick(e) for ich, jehe or jelaufen for gehe or gelaufen, and kannste for kannst du.
Berlinerisch was generally considered Friendly, Uneducated, Unrefined, and Impolite. Especially in Stuttgart and Augsburg I was told about the "Berliner Schnauze" and given a stereotype of loud, talkative, but also open, self-reliant and world-traveled. In Hanover I found more positive adjectives. I was told that in West Germany a knowledge of Berlinerisch comes from their portryal in TV comedy shows and on talkshows. People often associate Berlinerisch with the East, in East Germany and West. Interestingly, while everyone else seems to think of Berlinerisch as cultured, the Berliners themselves seem to regard it as sounding provincial.
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In Dresden I booked a hostel in the Neustadt (New City, in comparison to Altstadt, Old City) a section of the city full of students, artist shops, murals and bars. My first and most successful study location was at the trendy Neustädter Markt by the famous Golden Rider statue. I avoided passing out surveys in touristy areas of the Altstadt, but I enjoyed the area and the view, so I stepped off the bus every day at Theaterplatz and then walked across the bridge over the Elbe to the Neustädter Markt.
It rained almost every day and was often difficult to obtain more than two or three surveys per day. Fortunately, I found help in unlikely places. I befriended a British church group that had come to help host a free sausage and currywurst giveaway sponsored by churches in the area. For four days, anyone passing through Albertplatz was treated to a free dinner. I found this the perfect place to pass out surveys, and I was so pleased with the location and the friendliness of the hosts that I helped the church group set up every day. I also met some German and American youths from an international school in the area. They volunteered to pass out some of my surveys as well, and they also took me clubbing around the Neustadt (for which they had the interesting word neustadten).
I also found some respondents in Ahearn Park, only a few blocks from my hostel. One of these was a Hungarian guest worker who had worked in France and told me that the Germans hold greater respect for people with different accents and dialects than their French counterparts.
Men and women of ages 14-80 were surveyed, with an average age of 33.6. In contrast to Berlin, 80% of respondents reported that they spoke a dialect, of which only 20% were born in Dresden and 75% live there now. In accordance with this greater regional diversity, many more dialects were represented, including Platt/Niederdeutsch, Thüringisch, Rheinhessisch, Oberösttereichisch/Innviertelisch and two varieties of Sächsisch: Chemnitzer Sächsisch and "Dresdnerisch." Only 50% spoke some form of Sächsisch.
The most common expression of typical Sächsisch was the word ne/no for ja. This was something that had already caused me a good deal of confusion, and probably lost me some respondents as I misunderstood their expressions of agreement as refusals. There were also similarly contrasted pronunciations of question phrases, like globst de for glaubst du. Also interesting was one respondent's use of High German phrases in a uniquely Sächsisch meaning - der mehrt for der ist langsam and der ist dämmlich for der ist langweilig.
A speaker of Sächsisch was generally considered to be Friendly, Uneducated, Unrefined, and Polite. Sächsisch sounded like East Germany to many people, especially West Germans (their knowledge of Sächsisch during the Cold War came from the statements of East German officials on the news, and I was told a few times that it had a mystical, mysterious quality at that time because of its connotations with East Germany). In East Germany itself this holds true. One person in Berlin told me that under the Iron Curtain many people from Sachsen worked as low-level officials, and so Sächsisch felt like the voice of authority. People listed traits that may also be associated with East Germans like naivete, provinciality, and strong work ethic.
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Because of the busyness of the tourist season, it was very difficult to find a place to stay in Bavaria. The only place I could find was a facility for German youth groups that required a membership. I chose Augsburg because it was easier to find a place to stay, but also because I was looking for a place where the citizens spoke pure Bayrisch (Many Münchners, I was told, speak Hochdeutsch, and Nuremburg is associated with the Bavarian sub-dialect of Frankisch). Augsburg turned out to be the wrong place for this, as it lies in the Swabian Administrative Region of Bavaria. I found a perfect mish-mash of Bayrisch and Schwäbisch combination dialects.
I stayed in the ancient walled inner city of Augsburg in a room with a young man from the northern German island of Sylt who was interning in a designer store. My study locations were all in the inner city. I frequently wandered along the moss-grown northern wall of the city (near the Fischertor) because of the ancient wooden structures and old houses with colorful gardens. This place wasn't ideal for interviews, though, so I ended up working mostly in Königsplatz, a busy intersection of traffic with many places for park benches. I also passed out interviews in the Rathausplatz, where there is a large statue of the city's founder Augustus Caesar, and from the outdoor marketplace to the trendy shops in between Königsplatz and Rathausplatz. The rain was tremendously bothersome, but I was again fortunate in recruiting help from my roommate, who obtained permission to give surveys to employees at his designer store.
In the meantime I wandered around the old city, enjoyed the Roman History Museum, and on a hot afternoon took a surreptitious dip in the Lech, the river that runs straight through the city and crisscrosses it in various canals. I attempted to find information on a locally famous writer who wrote newspaper articles in Augschburgisch, the particular Bayrisch-Schwäbisch dialect of Ausburg. My attempt ended abruptly in the offices of the Augsburger Allgemeine, where I was informed that he had passed away a few months previously. On Saturday the Karneval der Welten was held in the Rathausplatz, a multicultural festival with booths and food from all over the world and a parade to raise awareness of international trade and world issues.
Respondents ranged in age from 13-68 with an average age of 33.7. The surveys confirmed the status of Augsburg as a complicated linguistic area. 35% of respondents were born in Augsburg and 55% live there now, although 75% were born in Bavaria or Swabia and all but three live there now. 25% reported that they spoke Bayrisch, 10% spoke Schwäbisch, 35% spoke some mixture of Schwäbisch and Bayrisch or Augsburgisch (which was repeatedly described as a local mixture of Schwäbisch and Bayrisch), and 15% spoke no dialect.
One respondent was a native Augsburger who teaches in Canada as a professor of languages. She explained that the Lech river that runs through the town is traditionally considered the linguistic boundary between the Schwäbisch and Bayrisch dialects. She also explained that most of the shoppers in the trendy districts were Bavarians from small towns to the East, which explains why only 55% of the respondents live in Augsburg.
Examples of Augsburgisch focused exclusively on the use of the sch sound as a replacement for High German s or st. Common examples were weisch for weist, or hoschta? for hast du? (This distinction also lead to different spellings of Augsburgisch, including Augschburgisch and Auxburgisch). Examples of Bayrisch were generally unique vocabulary words, such as farückta for komisch, but also examples of pronunciation like i hob for ich habe. Examples of Schwäbisch were also generally examples of unique vocabulary words like Mo for Mann - a famous Schwäbisch-ism was the unique pronunciation of Strassenbahn as Strassebahn.
A speaker of Bayrisch was generally considered to be Friendly, Educated, Unrefined, and Polite. I found it interesting that speakers of Bayrisch and Schwäbisch were considered educated but also unrefined. People immediately thought of a typical Bayrisch-speaker as conservative, Catholic, traditional. They often evoked the stereotypes of the farmer, of lederhosen, sausage, and beer.
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I stayed in a very cozy bed-and-breakfast in the suburb of Feuerbach and traveled by subway to downtown Stuttgart to obtain data. Stuttgart is a large industrial city, a shock after Augsburg's walled Old Town. At first it reminded me uncomfortably of Dallas. I walked around downtown and looked at the historical buildings and art museums, and then found Schlossplatz, a gigantic open park filled with park benches and places to congregate. The days were finally sunny and cloudless, and the conditions were absolutely perfect for my surveying. I finished all of my work in a record-breaking two days. On the second day I went to a park that was owned by a university, and there I interviewed a few university students. When I was done I checked out the linguistics department of the university. I bought food in a famous indoor market and the traveling Hamburger Fischmarkt, a Hamburg seafood market with booths and shows that had set up downtown for the week. I spent the rest of the week going to the excellent Stuttgart art museums and to neighboring towns. I went to the medieval town of Esslingen one day, and then the next day to the "baroque experience" in Ludwigsburg, a palace with museums and a large garden complex that includes aviaries, wooded areas, and a large Märchengarten of animatronic fairy tale characters.
Respondents were of the ages 14-67 with an average age of 33.5. 15% of the respondents were born in Stuttgart and 60% live there now - 45% reported that they spoke Schwäbisch, while 40% reported that they spoke with no dialect.
Like in Berlin, the surveying of university students when possible has skewed my results somewhat. This was why so few respondents say that they live in Stuttgart. As we saw in Berlin, higher education seems to correspond with a lack of dialect (or what is claimed to be a lack of dialect).
Like in Ausburgisch, many respondents chose as typically Schwäbisch such phrases as weisch for weist du, and many mentioned uniquely Schwäbisch vocabulary words like Erdapfel for Kartoffel, muggeseggele for ein klein wenig, and schnakenhuster for ein ganz dünner Mensch.
Schwäbisch speakers were considered Friendly, Educated, Unrefined, and Polite. A very common stereotype of Schwäbisch speakers seems to be thriftiness/stinginess (sparsam/geizig); this was something that I heard over and over, especially in West Germany. Like Bavarians, Schwäbisch speakers are considered simple, conservative, and traditional, but are not so associated with specific foods, dress, and occupation.
I was told that it is difficult for Schwäbisch speakers to learn Hochdeutsch (Schwäbisch was also the hardest dialect for me to understand as a speaker of Hochdeutsch). However, Baden-Württemburg has a very strong economy and is the home of many internationally powerful corporations, and this has led to the famous ad campaign and bumper sticker slogan: Wir können alles ausser Hochdeutsch. ('We can do anything except speak High German.')
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In Hanover I had an entire floor of the youth hostel to myself for most of my stay. Many people on the way had warned me that there would not be a lot to do in Hanover, but my experience proved otherwise. It was a reasonably short walk to the stately Rathaus from my hostel and I found most of my respondents along the banks of the lake that borders the Rathaus and the park that extends down to a vast man-made lake, the Maschsee. Most of the city's points of interest were in the old town directly north of the Rathaus, and there in a lot near the Neustädter Hofkirche I found a quiet area with some benches and a few more respondents. Once again I completed the survey in only two days. I presented the very last out of 150 respondents with a chocolate bar, a token of my appreciation.
In my free time I wandered up to the Wilhelm Busch Museum of Cartoon and Caricature, which was my favorite museum of the trip. There I also found the Royal Gardens of Herrenhausen, a giant structure of stately gardens and hedges that was transformed into an unearthly wonderland of art, music, and vaudeville at night with the summer Kleines Fest im Grossen Garten, a yearly event. I also attended a Carillon concert, got lost in a vast woodland park to the east of Hanover, and visited with my old Scoutmaster, a native Wisconsinite who had moved to Germany and with whom I had not spoken in ten years.
Respondents ranged in ages from 16-54 with an average age of 32.3. 70% were born in Hanover and 75% live there now, and only three respondents (15%) reported speaking a dialect other than Hochdeutsch. Of those that spoke Hochdeutsch, 12% actually wrote the word Hochdeutsch as their native dialect, while all the rest wrote that they speak no dialect whatsoever. This has been the general trend throughout the survey, and it seems reasonable to conclude that Hochdeutsch is considered "dialect-free" speech, in much the same way that Standard American English is considered to be accentless.
Speakers of Hochdeutsch were considered Friendly, Educated, Refined, and Polite. Positive associations with Hochdeutsch were directness, clarity, intellectualism, education, and openness. Negative associations were coldness, snobbiness, arrogance and, as one respondent put it, being "just German." When one hears Hochdeutsch one doesn't think of a citizen of Hanover, but of an educated person. One thinks of someone who has learned to speak proper German.
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