There are two meanings of "High German" and even many Germans get confused. Modern Standard German today is a polycentric mix of South German vocabulary, East German grammar (due to Martin Luther's Bible) and North German pronunciation.

This explains why you think a high German dialect doesn't sound like high German for you.

But the term is originally meant in geographical sense because Low German was spoken in the low parts and High German in the "high lands" approaching the Alps.

Anyway it's a gradual dialect continuum, the "borders" are only defined by consonant shifts like s to sh.

An original Hamburger (not the sandwich) like late Helmuth Schmidt pronounced st in "Stein" like in English "stone" and not like Shtein.

And in the South West and Switzerland you'll often hear "du hast" pronounced like "du hasht".

But be assured people from the Palatine which is a neighbouring region to where I live have no big problems understanding Pennsylvania Dutch.

Cheers Rolf
(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

In reply to Re^5: Inclusion of Raku on PerlMonks by LanX
in thread Inclusion of Raku on PerlMonks by haukex

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