Is there any reason why the Bavarians are making their official dialect so different to High German? Is it just for the sake of distinctiveness?
Look to the West Volume V: To Dream Again
- Thread starter Thande
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Absolutely. It’s part of creating a nationalism to override any pro-German sentiments.
I have the impression, based on attempts to record "dialect" I've seen in English anyway, that a lot of what looks unintelligible in writing is somewhat easier to pick up audibly. The brain can adjust for more or less consistent sound shifts, interpolate elided syllables and phonemes, analogize to other dialects it had more experience. Whereas people who are writing down "dialect" have a tendency to exaggerate whatever sounds strange to them in ways that obscure the continuum the sounds lie on, and adopt ad hoc, outre spellings for things that could more reasonably be written closer to standard, in order to indicate the direction in which sounds are shifted. Now from the tiny snippets of "Boarisch" we get to see, it looks rather like someone resolved to first of all reduce Bavarian phonetics to a minimal-character yet tightly phonetic code, and secondly choose a basis for their vowel system so as to minimize the correspondence to standard "High German" as much as they could. Much as Polish is written with a set of phonetic rules that makes it look radically different than modern transliterations of Russian to Latin letters, yet I suspect if I could understand the basis of Polish spellings I would find the two languages bear close resemblance to each other, as close as English to Dutch perhaps. Or the way that variations in decisions on how to record sounds make Danish and Swedish look more different from each other than I bet they sound.
Meanwhile of course it could also be that versus OTL, where Bavarians are under some pressure to harmonize their spoken mother tongue to High German, whereas in this ATL the independent government and a culture stressing resentment of "High German" would-be overlords and conquerors rather exerts a tendency to exaggerate and systemize differences, the commonly spoken language has indeed over the generations since the Jacobin Wars diverged away from HG instead of toward it, and this process is reinforced by official governmental language and other high social institutions that define a kingdom "Received Pronounciation."
Still, if I squint, I think I can reconstruct the High German from the ATL "Boarisch." I'd do better if I actually knew German!
Meanwhile of course it could also be that versus OTL, where Bavarians are under some pressure to harmonize their spoken mother tongue to High German, whereas in this ATL the independent government and a culture stressing resentment of "High German" would-be overlords and conquerors rather exerts a tendency to exaggerate and systemize differences, the commonly spoken language has indeed over the generations since the Jacobin Wars diverged away from HG instead of toward it, and this process is reinforced by official governmental language and other high social institutions that define a kingdom "Received Pronounciation."
Still, if I squint, I think I can reconstruct the High German from the ATL "Boarisch." I'd do better if I actually knew German!
Thande
Donor
As a couple of people realised, the difference of 'Boarisch' is deliberately exaggerated by the Bavarians to try to neutralise pan-German sentiment. It is worth noting that the depiction in the story here, like the Cubwickwa pidgin in the Mount-Royal segment, has been exaggerated further from the 1890s reality (deliberately or unconsciously) by the 1970s writers who are being influenced by Diversitarian norms. In the same way that, for example, stories about the robber barons of the Gilded Age in the USA written in the OTL 1970s might be influenced by Cold War hindsight about capitalism vs communism.
Meridia is the real America. I refuse to believe that a dirty monarchy is something a real American would root for. It's even ruled by King George!
It's a constitutional monarchy, no?
Edit: But you're right, Meridia, a melting pot republic, is actually closer to the USA than the ENA.
As a Canadian, rooting for the ENA just seems natural. Although they're not enough of an underdog. So really I root for Superia.
I mean, the ENA is going to be rather regretful about its past ethnic cleansing very soon.
Diversitarianism will rise. And I can’t imagine Diversitarians looking kindly at ethnic cleansing.
Except in the name of DIVERSITY. We don't know enough about the different types of Diversitarianism to be sure about that. We do know that the Russian school isn't entirely opposed to wiping out all the societists, but don't because that wouldn't be "the done thing", diversity speaking.
Great, another excuse for an organised punch-up.
The more I read about diversitarianism, the crazier it looks. But, then, I'm not native to TTL...
That’s a good point, actually, especially considering we already know that the ethnic cleansing of Wallonia is a Heritage Point of Controversy.