Learning German: der Ampelmann

Picture this: You've just been dropped onto a street corner in the middle of some world-class city at three in the morning. You're standing outside some trendy club, and various artsy / "anti-establishment" people are milling around, speaking various languages with various accents. Other than that, the city is quiet -- no cars are to be seen or heard. You could be anywhere. But you will know within 60 seconds whether or not you're in a German-speaking country. Just wait and see whether anyone crosses the street.

Mother's Milk

Pretty much every post on this blog mentions Dialekt in some way. I’m fascinated by it – the way in which an entire country can speak counterhegemonically. This isn’t the German you learn in German class, or on TV or in films. It exists solely in the mouths and media of the people who speak it, who aren’t exactly well-known the world over. Had I not come to Austria, I probably wouldn’t even know that Austrian dialect exists. And Schwiizerdüütsch – the dialect spoken in Switzerland – still remains the stuff of legend for me. I’ve heard Austrians attempt to mimic it, which is where my knowledge of the word “Schwiizerdüütsch” (Hochdeutsch would be Schweizerdeutsch) comes from, but I’ve never heard it spoken by an actual Schweizer. (I did, however, hear a guest lecture by a Swiss person attempting to speak Hochdeutsch last week, and that was enough to convince me that Schweizerdeutsch is indeed an entirely different animal.)

Yes, Dialekt is something special, and it’s something that, as the expression goes, really needs to be passed on with the mother’s milk for perfect mastery. But there’s one group of Austrians that doesn’t speak Dialekt with the same fluency as everyone else. And oddly enough, they’re the ones for whom the sacred rite of Dialekt-through-breastfeeding occurred in the not-so-distant past. I’m talking about toddlers.