Hacker News Reader

Comment by nedt | Hacker News Reader

I can mostly speak for German. It seems to mix them all into one general language. But there are a lot of local differences between north and south of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. And it’s not just dialect, but really different words that might not be understood everywhere. If you look at the english part it has at least three different words. Similar in Spanish.

View on HN

My best guess:

- Swiss German and Austrian German didn't make the cut because Switzerland and Austria are on good terms with Germany and don't mind if we call their languages a dialect of German. Not only is that justification to exclude them, they are also not in Google translate for this reason (which this map uses)

- Luxembourg did mind and went to great lengths to get their German dialect recognized as a separate language, is in Google translate, but Wikipedia lists them as only 300k speakers

- Frisian is seen as a distinct language because of how different it is, is in Google translate, but has about 200k speakers

- Similarly, Scottish Garlic is in Google translate has only 70k-200k speakers

The map is consistent if you set the goal of only considering languages that are in Google translate and have at least 500k speakers.

I do think these rules detract from the map. Frisian and Luxembourgish are interesting as "in-between" languages (Luxemburgish has a lot of French influence, Frisian is closer related to English). And Swiss German has many distinct words that are very different from their German counterparts, so for the purposes of this map it really should be a language.

IIUC, the Swiss German can't make a cut as there's no standard written form (and with it, not much resources), and the variations between the cities are pretty significant.

There really isn't a single "Swiss German" dialect. It is rather a family of dialects, and this family is again part of the larger family of "Alemannic German" dialects, which are spoken in most of southwestern Germany, Switzerland and western parts of Austria [0]. It is really very hard to clearly demarcate "Swiss German" from dialects spoken for example in the Black Forest, around the city of Freiburg im Breisgau, in Vorarlberg or even (historically) in Alsace. My own dialect is Swabian (also Alemannic), and I never had trouble understanding the local dialects around Basel, Berne or Zurich. It is easier for me to understand these Swiss German dialects than, for example, Bavarian dialects.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German#/media/File:A...

As per some folks I've met (I live in french Romandie, almost 0 variation here they just speak slower than french), for ie folks from Zurich its almost impossible to understand folks from Bern. And thise are 2 big cities pretty close to each other, not some remote mountain valley.

But they can easily switch to more modest verion or even high german if needed.

> for ie folks from Zurich its almost impossible to understand folks from Bern. And thise are 2 big cities pretty close to each other, not some remote mountain valley.

This is absolutely not true. Bern is the capital and many people travel there for work or other reasons. It's also a dialect very heavily featured on TV (e.g. I remember there was a weather reporter from Bern, don't know if she still does this), a lot of famous politicians are/were from Bern (e.g. former Federal Council member Adolf Ogi) and many famous musicians also sang/sing in this dialect (Mani Matter, Züri West, Gölä, etc.)

Almost all Swiss dialects are mutually intelligible simply due to the high level of exposure to the diversity (and also their relative similarity). There are some people who don't understand Walliserdeutsch well, because it's less represented and also linguistically more removed from the rest - but even that's something you get used to quickly.

Alemannic is still spoken in Alsace. Albeit it has some of the same issue your listed: no standard written form (Hochdeutsch was used for that) and wide difference even between close villages. In particular, Northern and Southern varieties have a different vocalic systems.

Similiar to Slovenian - we have 400 dialects, grouped in 7 larger groups based on similarity. Given that there is only like 2 million speakers that may feel like a large number, but it's a consequence of rather hilly geography.

Differences between some of them are rather extreme, especially Prekmurje dialects feel like their own language - so we need to fallback to "book" Slovenian when talking with people from different regions.

I think for ‘Scottish Garlic’ you meant ‘Scottish Gaelic’…

It’s hilarious that an English language website has so many enthusiasts for the regional differences of their favourite foreign languages while all pretending that English is monolithic and consistent everywhere. Try driving around the north of England for an hour or two and see how many different words for bread roll you encounter. Baps, barm cakes, oven bottom muffins…

In my experience, people mostly tend to hyperbolize the differences between their local dialect and "everything else" for patriotic reasons. Usually, they give some singular words that are vastly different as examples (I suspect you can find such examples in most languages and most regions), and ignore that 99% of the vocabulary, plus the grammar and most daily sentence constructs, are equivalent (modulo the accent). A standard example in German is how the outermost bread slice is called, which differs completely from region to region, town to town, and sometimes even family to family [0].

[0] https://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/...

> And it’s not just dialect, but really different words that might not be understood everywhere. If you look at the english part it has at least three different words. Similar in Spanish.

I think you cannot really compare the minuscule differences between "Standard German", "Austrian Standard German", and "Swiss Standard German" to the differences between English, Irish and Welsh, which are not even from the same language family. Also, the tool is based on Google Translate, and AFAIK Google Translate doesn't differentiate between them.

Comparing the tool to this map [0], it seems to do a pretty good job in capturing all major languages in Europe, while ignoring their dialects.

But I agree that I would be great if you could zoom into the map and also show differences in local dialects. ChatGPT seems to be pretty good at translating to different variants of standard German, or German dialects [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Europe#/media/Fil...

[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/67bba4db-9458-800c-b5f8-fd3fa196d4...

Italy is the same. Each region has it's own variations of words, which can be very different or mean different things in other regions.

For example in Rome a grocery store bag is "busta", but in Milan it is "sachetto" with "busta" being the word they use for an envelope.

Same for Belgium, Google/Apple translate has never been able to correctly translate French and Dutch for us while our vocabulary choices are drastically different from neighbouring France and Netherlands.

For people with their iDevice set to the Swiss/Austrian German or Belgian Dutch locales, Apple Translate initially didn't even offer their languages in Apple Translate (i.e. not even German or Dutch). Only after internal complaining did they allow Swiss/Austrian German users to use German in Apple Translate.

For an example take a look at this map of the different words used in German for "meatballs":

https://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/runde-7/f01f/

The Spain map is not showing Spanish only, those are separate languages spoken in Spain

Reply on news.ycombinator.com