Re: A Reworking of German Language Classification

Bob wrote:

And Central and Northern
Bavarian seem intelligible.

Yes and no. Depends on the age of speakers and social context, also (nearly) extinct versus current lects.

I am born 1957 and grew up in the east of Vienna speaking East-Viennese dialect at home, Standard German in school. Most of the Viennese dialects disappeared in the last 20 years, e.g. Schönbrunnerisch. Now there is only one dialect in Vienna, which developed from old East-Viennese ('Meidlingerisch') to a more moderate dialect, half the way to Standard German. Maybe we can call this 'Urban Bavarian', which is quite intelligible with 'Urban Swabian' or 'Urban Franconian'.

When I go to rural areas and try to understand 'grandfathers' then I maybe will understand less than 50%. E.g. at the age of 15 I didn't understand the granny of my girlfriend - in a village just 20 km east of my home.

What's the purpose of your 'Reworking of German Language Classification'? Just taxonomy for fun? The main purpose of ISO language codes is classifying _written_ languages. Written German is Standard German in 99.99% of the cases. In my dictionary of plants and animals covering ~300 languages German is German. The names

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feldsalat
----quote----
Ackersalat (in Schwaben), Mäuseöhrchensalat (Eifel, Hunsrück), Vogerlsalat (Österreich), Vogelsalat (Südtirol), Rapunzelsalat (Thüringen, Sachsen), Nüsslisalat oder Nüssler (Schweiz), Nüsschen (Nordhessen), Sunnewirbilin bzw. Sonnenwirbelin Baden.
----quote end----

are all German;-)

Helmut Wollmersdorfer
.

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