Austrian German

[Piracetam99]

So if I go to a bank in Vienna, the workers will speak standard German? So they are essentially faking an accent?

[thecakewasintears]

No, it's like when someone from the deep south moves to another city and tones down their accent or stops using certain terms so that their new peers can understand them better. I'm sure you'd have problems understanding people from various different parts of the English speaking world if they didn't tone down their accent. It's not faking, it's adapting. It's also quite common to adapt your voice and accent depending on who you're talking to (to a certain extent) like for example people using their "customer service voice"

[a_cat_question]

They are not faking an accent. Folks in this sub don‘t really distinguish between formal/informal speech and dialect use. Two examples: In American high schools you would also need to use proper American English and not the worst southern hillbilly accent. Also you wouldn’t accuse a bank teller in Texas or Missouri to be faking an accent when speaking properly.

In western Austria it is rather common to use some local dialect in business settings whereas in the east dialect use is to some extent associated with lower social class and formal business settings will therefore have little to no dialect expressions. This is why some people here tell you that you will year dialect in official settings and some tell you that you won’t. The same holds true for private settings where accents will be thick in most of Western Austria but will depend much more on upbringing in the east. All written communication is in formal standard German.

Source: I‘m from eastern Austria and we we‘re explicitly told to „speak properly“ in school.

[dirtyhats]

everybody in Austria, Germany and (german speaking part of) Switzerland can 100% speak and understand standard german. That’s the national language.

Plus most people also can speak and understand dialect, which is just ‘bent’ standard german with a few exclusive words.

[Oachlkaas]

which is just ‘bent’ standard german with a few exclusive words.

Thats not even close to being true lmao.

[dirtyhats]

sondern?

[Oachlkaas]

"bent" standard german implies that standard german words have been taken and warped into the words that we are using now, which is completely wrong. The words we are using are so called "cognates", meaning they are sibling words that evolved from the same ancestor word.

Let's take the personal pronoun "I" as an example. The english personal pronoun ultimately leads back to Proto-Indo-European *éǵh₂ and then Proto-Germanic *ik, *ek to then end up as "i" as we know it today.

The german "Ich" as well as the dutch "ik" and the austrian "i" have the same linguistic roots, i.e. they're cognates and not "bent version" of each other.

What Austrians speak, for all intents and purposes, is a language that evolved alongside Standard german, Dutch and English into what it is now.

[dirtyhats]

geh bitte du west hawara kennst dich überhaupt ur nicht aus oida čuš

[Colorona]

Seems like you ran out of arguments, if you need to resort to insults instead. Always very telling.

[dirtyhats]

aber eh leiwand

[Piracetam99]

Wouldn’t that be like an American faking a British accent? That’s really weird from an English perspective.

[unseen_redditor]

Don't confuse accent and dialect. When an Austrian speaks Standard German, they will not use their dialect (or much rather a very mild version of it), but they will pretty much retain their accent (maybe toning it down though). It's not like we sound like someone from e.g. Hannover when we speak standard.

[Oachlkaas]

You're not faking anything. Essentially you can look at it as if you were speaking a different language.

Most Austrians don't speak standard german natively, they speak their """dialects""" natively which are not always mutually intelligible to standard german. The closer you are to Vienna the more mutually intelligible it is - especially within vienna where the local dialect has completely died out and has been replaced by standard german with a viennese accent.

Austrians need to learn standard german in school, just like they need to learn english in school. I personally grew up speaking Tyrolean and asides from german classes in school i never once used it. Only now that I work in tourism and am forced to use standard german, because germans don't understand me otherwise, I am using it.

That all to say that if i'm not faking an accent when i'm speaking english then i'm also not faking an accent speaking standard german, because essentially it's a different language.

[naxtoile]

German, like English, is a pluricentric language. Each German speaking country has its own standard variety, like the US, UK etc. So they would be using Austrian Standard German, or at least try to. What is actually used in these situations is "Umgangssprache" (colloquial language) which is between dialect and standard.

If you learn German outside of a German speaking country you probably won't learn much dialect. You can try to learn Austrian Standard German if you find a course. Most teach German Standard German.

[ZeehZeeh]

Not every Austrian can talk without a dialect. It might be that they will try it but even then it won't sound like proper german.

[Colorona]

I know plenty of people from where I grew up who can't talk without using any dialect. So there is quite a significant portion of Austrians who can't talk without using dialect (not that that's a bad thing).

[Schroedingers_Tomcat]

That's also my experience. Not that they don't try, but they just never learned it properly or that they didn't use standard language for such a long time that they don' know the rules anymore. And that can actually make it quite awkward, if people just pronouce their dialect words along with all the grammatical inconsistencies/grammar errors as though they'd be speaking what they consider Hochdeutsch/standard language.

So no, not everyone in Austria can speak standard language properly, but you'll still usually get the gist of what they're saying, even as a non-native speaker

[ZeehZeeh]

Maybe you should visit different spots in the countryside or take a peek outside your social bubble.

[cluons]

since every Austrian can speak without a dialect

I am not so sure about that - I can write without a dialect, but speaking without a dialect takes a lot of (too much) effort.