andrewshrehane6j

It seems to me that my friends who speak high German seem fine communicating everywhere. I, on the otherhand, seem stuck everywhere.

The only exception to this seems to be Switzerland, where friends of mine have sometimes ended up completely confused by the accent.

I wonder what Lichtenstein's is like...

dmu

I've got Liechtensteiner friends and can say that their dialect is even worse than any of the other Schwyzerdüütsch ones. Thank goodness they all learn Hochdeutsch at school and lesser mortals can communicate with them....

ketty

I am from the middle of Germany.
And the things, which I most enjoy are:
A german person from the very northern part (East Friesland) and one person for the deepest Bavarian area, sitting together on a table and talking about their whole lifes.
And I in the middle , just think by rotfl:
If they could understand each other, it might help a alot, but then this talk would not be soooo awesome.

ngnear

Germany, Austria and Switzerland are no different to England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, USA, Australia etc when it comes to the variations of accents and dialects.
As soon as someone hears you are a foreigner they will usually at least try to speak high German.
Vocabulary is easy enough to pick up, but even after living in german speaking countries for over 25 years I still find grammar a nightmare!

Tim

crap coffee

You guys are so lazy (IMHO) because, German is such a piece of cake to learn if your first language is English. You guys just being lazy and don't want to learn - that's it.

Compare to my situation (as an Asian bilingual speakers), what the hell. I gotta laugh.

I guess, if I speak English as first language, I probably would speak German and French quite fluently. (I can speak French reasonably though and forgotten all German)

Novocastrian

I do have English as a first language and I do speak German and French quite fluently. But it wasn't easy and please note "quite" fluently. In German for example I can read anything except Beamterdeutsch without difficulty, but I couldn't write a grammatically fluent page about anything, which would not need some corrections from a native speaker.

I don't speak any Asian languages despite having lived in Toronto for the past 15 years.

crap coffee

I do agree German is one of the hard languages to learn - but nothing compare to English. I also found German was quite hard -- it's just so difficult like Physics - feel it's more like science. however, French was different (to me) - it's like liberal arts

English isn't a smart language at all or well organized or scientific like German and Korean etc. I'd say Japanese is one of the stupid languages as well - it isn't perfect yet unlike Korean. I previously leant Latin so it helps to learn French though, but sadly I am actually giving up learning German - don't think I would need it for my life so. (as an ex classical musician, German would be priority than French, however I just can't, CAN'T learn to many at once - am toooo old for that!) Like your German, I need some grammatical corrections from a native speaker when I write official documents at work despite having lived in English speaking countries for the past 16 years. because we lived in Asia until I was 14 - that's why. I am not a native English speaker. well. my french lesson is commencing again from next month! Yahoo!

Learn for your life.

Kar98

German is my first language, and in rural areas south of Munich, near the Austrian border I don't understand a word. Likewise way up north, in little villages in the heath.

THR

I became interested. How does Japanese differ from Korean?

crap coffee

Sorry, I can't explain that. Why don't you google it?

A major difference is

Japanese = Hiragana + Katakana + Kanji (Chinese Charters) - without those 3 combinations, a sentence makes no sense.

whereas Korean are almost perfect language. Korean Alphabet on its own, it's enough.

All I know is, ONLY Koreans can learn Japanese so easily as there are many similarities between Korean and Japanese. ex) same sentence order, similar words, similar pronunciation ..etc. Actually they can speak like Native Japanese speakers ... without too much study or hassles...

For me it only took a year to catch up A-Level Japanese... It was just sooo easy, but it would take 5~6 years for you guys.. I lived in Korea prior to living in Japan.. so it was advantage...

I began to learn German at 14, French at 15, Japanese at 16 and Latin at 21. dunno, why I found German was the hardest ever, and I've got no more desire to learn German any further - such a horrible language... after all, it's not very attractive! But I do love all German and Austrian composers... like Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and Mozart etc... I love them to death, really. But I don't want to learn German! Makes no sense, eh?

THR

You are so very right, if I were really interested I could just google it.

But I am really interested and didn't bother to google it. Reading someone telling it to me so much more interesting.

Even though your view on the issue is probably not exactly impartial, the Japanese may have a different view to what you say, but nevertheless.

Stephi152

I'm German and I must admit that it's even hard for me to understand the bavarian accent! But I also think you'll get along with a basic German because they'll will understand you

Leamar

Honestly, I think, it's hardly any use learning an accent/dialect in a foreign language. Can come in handy at times for sure, but isn't worth pouring too much energy into unless you are a language maniac, if you ask me.
When I lived in Taiwan, I understood exactely one phrase in the local Chinese dialect and that was as much as I ever "needed" (was fun though to see the reaction of the Chinese kids who thought I couldn't only speak Chinese but even Taiwanese

Bikbergen

I still can't get my head round Klingon, toughest language anywhere

THR

Where is that spoken? Isn't that a fictional language?