Questions about dialects in France, Germany and Italy

Ricky Lim   Tue Mar 09, 2010 10:11 am GMT
Thank everyone who can answer the questions below

1. What is Marseille dialect? Is it a dialect of Occitan? Or can a Parisian understand the local conversation there? What language does a local Maeseille speak?

2. Concerning Germany, are there Berlin dialect, Hamburg dialect or Munich dialect? Can a standard German speaker understand the dialects there? What language do the local people in the three cities speak in daily life?

3.In Italy, are Romenesco, Milanese and Neapolitan spoke in daily life? Can a standard Italian speaker understand the languages?

Thanks again~
Ricky Lim   Tue Mar 09, 2010 10:16 am GMT
PS: I'm from China. Here in Beijing, people speak Beijing-type mandarin everyday. But in Shanghai, people speak Shanghainese every day. The natives from two cities can't understand each other using their own dialects.
So Chinese also need to learn standard mandarin (based in Beijing type) to communicate with people around the country.
Luca   Tue Mar 09, 2010 10:29 am GMT
About Italian:
Romanesco and Neapolitan are widely spoken in everyday life. Milanese to a far lesser extent due to the percentage of original Milanese in Milan (true Milanese in Milan are like the Native Americans in the United States).
An italian mother tongue can understand them all quite well, maybe he/she'll miss some word or colorful expressions here and there. In fact, in everyday life dialect is used only among persons who can understand and speak it.
Ni hao!
gg   Tue Mar 09, 2010 10:47 am GMT
About French: Someone from Marseille speaks French with a Marseille accent. Same language, grammar, same words (appart from the inevitable local slang). Just poorer phonology (/o/ and /ɔ/, /ø/ and /œ/, /e/ and /ɛ/ are all allophonic pairs in Marseille but distinct phonemes in standard French), and no nasal vowels (/ɛ̃/ = /en/ or /eŋ/, /ɑ̃/ = /an/ or /aŋ/, /õ/ = /ɔn/ or /ɔŋ/, /œ̃/ = /œŋ/)

Someone from Paris would have little to no trouble understanding them, unless they exclusively used Marseille slang.
Ricky Lim   Tue Mar 09, 2010 12:21 pm GMT
Luca and gg: Thank you two very much!!

Luca:Buonasera!!...Here in Beijing is 8PM so I say it. Is that right?
Luca   Tue Mar 09, 2010 1:19 pm GMT
Buona sera is correct; as an informal greeting, ciao is also used.
So, ciao!
Ricky Lim   Tue Mar 09, 2010 2:08 pm GMT
Ciao, Luca
But I still want to know why native Milanese gave up their own dialect?
As in China, natives of large cities usually have some sense of superiority. That is, they look down on the newcomers coming from small cities or towns.
So the newcomers often try hard to learn local dialect to be better accepted by the natives' circle.

The other point is that as Beijing is the capital and speak the standard form of Mandarin but Shanghai is another center in the Yantze river delta, Shanghai natives want to show their own identity by speaking their own dialect and refuse the Beijing style.

As I'm concerned Milan is a center in Northern Italy and Milanese might want to show difference from Rome or Tuscana in central Italy?

Thanks
Luca   Tue Mar 09, 2010 3:25 pm GMT
Ricky Lim, the fact is not that the Milanese gave up their dialect: you have to consider that Milan during the previous decades has been literally overwhelmed by southern Italians. Nowadays true milanese in Milan are no more than 30%, I suppose. You can obviously hear the milanese slang in Milan, but the great majority of the natives are not able to speak it. And many of them are old people.
You have also to take into account that less and less youngsters speak dialect in Italy nowadays, at least here in the north.
In Italy, to speak dialect has never been considered posh: here is posh to speak proper and grammatically correct standard Italian (personally I don't agree, but it's so).
It would be extremely rare to hear dialect spoken in formal situations here.
Ricky Lim   Wed Mar 10, 2010 1:19 am GMT
Thank you, Luca.
I think I've got it. The situation in two countries are quite different.
In China we think dialect is the ties to our ancesters. If we can't speak dialect, then we lose our roots. And it's horrible.
Since everybody can speak standard language by school learning and media communicating, it's even more important to speak dialect in the daily life.
Dialect and standard language serve different fields of life here in China.

Welcome to China then, and it'll be surprising to feel so many colorful dialect here.

Here are some words that's so different.
I you he/she/it we you(pl.) they
Beijing uo ni ta uo men ni men ta men
Shanghai ngu nong i a la na i la
Hongkong ngo nei koei ngo dei nei dei koei dei
Taipei ngua li i ngun lin in

Thanks~~
South Korean   Wed Mar 10, 2010 4:06 am GMT
There were many dialects, which can be seen as totally different languages, throughout France.But since France became a modern state, it enforced French, which was originally a Parisian dialect, throughout the nation. Even as late as the twentieth century, local languages were still spoken at home but children were disciplined in school not to use them.
The centralization of Mandarin would be similar to this process, I imagine, except for that it is continuing, whereas in Marseilles or Montpellier, very few people speak Languedoc nowadays.
PARISIEN   Wed Mar 10, 2010 11:53 am GMT
<< There were many dialects, which can be seen as totally different languages, throughout France.But since France became a modern state, it enforced French, which was originally a Parisian dialect, throughout the nation. >>

-- This is funny!

This stupid hypothesis was proposed in the middle of the 19e century by linguist Gaston Paris and has been proven wrong long time ago. But it seems current English literature still takes that bullshit for granted.

Sometimes I *do* think that people who can't read serious languages like French and German and only can have access to second rate English scientific literature should better refrain from posting incompetent advices.
South Korean   Wed Mar 10, 2010 3:01 pm GMT
"The standard for French is based on the dialect of Paris, called Francien, which has been the official standard language since the mid-16th century. Francien has largely replaced other regional dialects of French spoken in northern and central France..."
Encyclopaedia Britannica

"À la veille de la Révolution française, on estime qu'un quart seulement de la population française parle français, le reste de la population parle des langues régionales.
Au Nord ce sont les parlers d'oïl, au Sud les parlers d'oc, formes régionales de l'occitan, ainsi que le breton, le basque, le catalan, l'arpitan, le flamand, l'alsacien entre autres. L'unification du français débutée par Talleyrand et continuée par Jules Ferry a pour but de créer une seule langue française sur tout le territoire français. Si le français s'impose assez vite dans les régions où l'on parle des dialectes de langue d'oïl, des méthodes très coercitives sont employées afin d'éliminer le breton, l'occitan, le catalan, le basque, le corse, etc. (notamment des humiliations physiques les jeunes élèves, voir Vergonha (lingüicidi))."
Wikipedie française
PARISIEN   Wed Mar 10, 2010 3:34 pm GMT
South Korean :

. this is pure bullshit
. and by the way there no such French wiki (though Wikipedia is notoriously full of shit)

From an English wiki:

"Francien is nineteenth-century linguists' term applied to the particular langue d'oïl that was spoken in the Île-de-France region (with Paris at its center) before the establishment of the French language as a standard language.[1]
According to one theory of the development of French, Francien was chosen out of all the competing Oïl languages as an official language (Norman and Picard being the main competitors in the mediaeval period). The theory currently prevailing, however, is that Francien was one of the dialects in the dialect continuum on top of which an administrative language, untrammelled by perceived regionalisms, was imposed as a compromise means of communication and record to replace Latin.
The existence and definition of Francien was put forward in the 19th century, partly to support the idea of the French language as enjoying a direct and pure lineage from Latin and to minimise the contribution of the various Romance languages of France. "


Quite simply, French grew up by itself as an "umbrella-language" ("Dachsprache"), independently of any political pressure. Just like most major languages.
Lollita   Wed Mar 10, 2010 3:45 pm GMT
Most people in Rome DO NOT speak Romanesco just like Most people in Milan DO NOT speak Milanese dialect. Milanese dialect is mostly used in suburbs of Milan and small villages around the city, the same is true of Romanesco: it is a low class dialect of Roman suburbs. Romanesco is practically a dialect of Lazio, while most people in Rome speak standard Italian with a Roman accent, which shares 95% phonological similarity with the Tuscan standard. In the city of Milan, almost no one uses Milanese dialect, they use standard Italian with a Milanese accent, which is not very standard because it has less than 50 % phonological similarity with the Tuscan standard (z,s are different pronounced, distribution of è é ò ó is different, so are double consonants etc)
Lollita   Wed Mar 10, 2010 3:48 pm GMT
You have also to take into account that less and less youngsters speak dialect in Italy nowadays, at least here in the north.
//This is not true.
In Vèneto, 99 % of people speak dialect and are proud of it, they speak standard-like Italian only with people from outside, but in family and between friends, only dialect is spoken in Vèneto.