For the same reason people will say Juno instead of Juni to hear the difference to Juli (June & Juli).

Most dialects nowadays are very watered down or even extinct. The original language of Hamburg was actually the stereotypical Low German, a literature language on its own.

The normative source for German pronunciation nowadays is a news show called Tagesschau which is produced in Hamburg.

That's why people from the north think they speak the best German. But there is no legaly binding norm defining the best accent. Germany doesn't have a culturally dominating center. (It's even not really clear what Germany is.)

And the more south you go the more "resistance" (to phrase is politely) against this northern standard.

For comparison, I've been told that the accent from the Midwest is considered very trustworthy in the US because many news speakers originated from there.

Indeed. I think the US would have descended into 3 or so dialects of American English by now were it not for radio and television (update: and air travel). I believe the ideal US accent is approximately Midwest or a modified Canadian (no “aboot” or “sorerry” allowed) because whatever accent is hardest to pin down—the most neutral being the least specific—comes off the most “American.” A talented linguist can tell you which state you’re from still but the average listener… Then again, I’ve had two linguists guess I was from Philadelphia—I’ve been accused of being Canadian more than once too—and until recently, I’d never been more than a few miles East of the Rio Grande.

To avoid misunderstandings, accent and dialect are often confused.

An accent is heard when pronouncing the same text.

A dialect is a language variety which has different words and grammars.

You might be interested in this Dialect Map of American English, though the author doesn't seem to follow his own advice and often explains dialects by accents.

The term, accent, is often incorrectly used in its place, but an accent refers only to the way words are pronounced, while a dialect has its own grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and common expressions as well as pronunciation rules that make it unique from other dialects of the same language.

Unfortunately the word "dialect" is of political importance since the French Revolution invented the nation state and is emotionally overloaded.

From a linguistic perspective do all Dutch, German, Afrikaans and Yiddish dialects belong to the same dialect continuum, like Portuguese, Castilian, Catalan, Occitan French, "proper" French and Italian do.

Making this statement too carelessly will at best end you up in a pub fight, at worst start a war.

> for radio and television

the Sunday sermon had this function in medieval days

I have to say I really love dialects and accents and I consider them part of high culture!

But I wouldn't object if some key figures of the Perl community would bother to be understood at conferences.

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

The southern dialects can really be hard to understand, especially when you leave the big cities and get into regions where only few people from distant areas have mixed with the local people. Baden-Württemberg made a great set of commercials from that fact, showcasing regional businesses, always ending with the slogan "Wir können alles außer Hochdeutsch." (We can do anything but speaking standard german). Example video

The same is true in principle for all regions, but as Hochdeutsch has its origins more in the northern area (Martin Luther's Bible translation had great influence on Hochdeutsch), the difference to Hochdeutsch is smaller. Of course, if people start speaking Plattdeutsch (a similar, but distinct language, not just a dialect), you are at least as lost as in Schwaben.

Plattdeutsch has influenced the northern accent, and so people often speak Hochdeutsch with a little bit of Plattdeutsch mixed in. Mix in a lot more Plattdeutsch and you get Missingsch, a kind of creole language that became famous by TV broadcasts of plays at the Ohnsorg-Theater. Many people still think that Ohnsorg plays are in Plattdeutsch. They aren't. Ohnsorg actors deliberately spoke (and still speak) Missingsch during TV recordings so people all across germany could understand what was said.

Plattdeutsch is also spoken in parts of the Netherlands, and because it was the lingua franca of the Hanse, it also had influence on scandinavian languages.

Plattdeutsch has a huge number of dialects. You will find that common words completely change at distances of 20 to 30 km, with exactly the same meaning. The word "to speak" can be "schnacken", "proten", "spreken". A girl or jung woman can be a "Dern", a "Wicht(en)", or a "Froon".

During most of the 20th century, up to about the end of the 1970s, Plattdeutsch was misattributed as the language of poor, uneducated, dumb people, and of the older people. Children were taught only Hochdeutsch. Plattdeutsch was frowned upon, especially in the larger cities. So there are one or two generations that never were native speakers of Plattdeutsch, even in regions where Plattdeutsch once was the every-day language. So Plattdeutsch started to become extinct. Starting in the late 1980s, Plattdeutsch was again tought in schools, as elective subject, essentialy as a foreign language like english, french, or latin. Public service broadcast started to send news and music in Plattdeutsch. Young people have rediscovered Plattdeutsch, but it is still far away from everyday use in the larger cities, and even in smaller towns, people tend to prefer Hochdeutsch. Plattdeutsch is generally used only if all people in the room are known to understand and speak Plattdeutsch. In regional retirement homes, being able to speak or at least understand Plattdeutsch is very important for the caregivers. It is often the native language of the older people, and it is the language they trust more. This lead to the situation that caregivers where hired from all over the world, and one of the first things they were taught was Plattdeutsch, not Hochdeutsch.

It's still strange to hear Plattdeutsch, as good as from my grandparents, from young people with a clear african, indian or asian origin. And even more strange when the same people struggle speaking Hochdeutsch.

Alexander

> Hochdeutsch has its origins more in the northern area (Martin Luther's Bible translation had great influence on Hochdeutsch), the difference to Hochdeutsch is smaller

Sorry but that's completely wrong and a typical Northern misconception.

Luther based his Bible translation on the language of his Duke's bureaucracy called Meißner Kanzleideutsch, which itself is a compromise of Central Eastern and South Eastern dialects but certainly not Northern.

Otherwise it wouldn't be called High German (it's about altitude not quality)

Your Plattdeutsch is referred as "Low German" in linguistics. Please keep in mind that "platt" is also a term for dialect in a much wider part of Germany, for instance Rhöner Platt

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