Multilingualism & Identity

The Bavarian Academy of the Sciences is currently at work on the second volume of the Bavarian Dictionary. The first volume alone contained over 25,000 headwords. It will be several decades before the lexicon is complete. In this interview, Prof. Anthony Rowley, passionate dialect researcher and head author of the Bavarian Dictionary, explains why dialects are so important in our society.

Prof. Rowley, your career is astonishing. You, a native of the British Isles, are fostering and documenting the Bavarian language. What significance have dialects in your life?

As a native of northern England, I speak a regional variety of English and have always been interested in languages and particularly in what is spoken round about me. When I began my university studies in Regensburg, I couldn’t ignore the fact that many of the students spoke dialect. Since then, I haven’t been able to let go of the subject. When I was an assistant at the University of Bayreuth, I was part of a work group that conceived an atlas of regional dialects, and now my main job is the vocabulary of Bavarian.

You have developed the Bavarian Dictionary from several millions of instances of usage of the Bavarian dialect. The first volume, A to Bazi, alone contains over 25,000 headwords. It will be a long way to Z. What is the attraction and motive of this detailed and exact work? What is the fascination of the Bavarian language?

The vocabulary of a dialect reflects both expert culture and everyday life. In this way, every word has something new and attractive about it. I’ve just finished the article on the word “Bier” (i.e. beer) and thereby learned a good deal about brewing and beer production in general, because I can organise the article properly only once I know the factual background. In other cases, it is the linguistic history of a relict word or the great variety of dialect pronunciations that fascinates me.

Not only you and the Bavarian Academy of the Sciences are working on a dialect dictionary: in other federal states, too, researchers are recording regional dialects in lexica. What is the use of this documentation for society?

As I mentioned, regional vocabularies are a reflection of regional cultures. Language is invariably an indication of the state of a society, and so the description of a dialect is essential for the description of a region: dialect is the expression par excellence of a local and regional identity. Whereas before linguistic historians emphasised rather the stony path to a unitary language, today we see much more the regional variety which has continued to this day – the history of Germany is also in the linguistic respect not a single, goal-directed line. The development of the German language can’t be understood unless one considers the regions.

Researchers see dialects in Germany threatened by extinction; at the same time, many parents feel uncertain: Should we speak dialectic with our children at all? In school, dialects are at most cultivated in special projects or work groups. How do things look for the preservation of dialects and the vernacular in Germany?

My colleagues all over Germany observe again and again that differences over short distances are equalised. Linguistic peculiarities of a village give way to the language of the nearest city. But you need only listen with an unbiased ear in order to recognise that the majority of Germans don’t speak pure High German. Not even those native speakers from Lower Saxony who like to maintain that they speak accent-free German succeed in this.
Alongside old dialects, and often in place of them, new regional “colloquial languages” are emerging. In a country that is now better linked than ever before, this development is hardly odd – here, too, language is an index of the state of society.
Here in Bavaria the dialects are fairly well maintained; even their treatment in the school curriculum is planned. But even in southern Germany, one can’t call a halt to the changes in language so long as the social changes continue.

dyke landscape

north German dialect WMA-Datei, 1:09 Min. Read transcript

Frankfurt 'Römer'

Hessian dialect WMA-Datei, 1:19 Min. Read transcript

Kleiner Watzmann

Bavarian dialect WMA-Datei, 1:03 Min. Read transcript

Trollinger grape wine

Swabian dialect WMA-Datei, 1:36 Min. Read transcript

Zwinger Dresden

Saxonian dialect WMA-Datei, 1:05 Min. Read transcript

Copyright Audio files: Deutsches Spracharchiv im Institut für Deutsche Sprache( i.e. German Language Archive of the Institute for German Language)

Experts are unanimous: multilingual education has positive effects on linguistic development. What advice would you give parents about passing on their regional dialect to their children? What are the advantages when children learn a dialect along with High German?

My advice is to pass your dialect on to your children! When a dialect is the first family language, I find it inauspicious to use another variant with the children. Moreover, whoever learns written German from people who don’t usually speak it in all circumstances runs the risk of acquiring a particularly clumsy or wooden German. A foundation in dialect invariably lends force to expression, and one shouldn’t give up this vivacity.

Should schools make more efforts to foster dialects?

Where the interest of the pupils can be aroused, yes. As dialects are part of the tradition of the German language as a whole, German class would be the appropriate place for this. Here in Bavaria the Ministry of Education even provides the schools with instructional aids.

Comedians often use dialects to reinforce linguistically the representation of regional peculiarities. In this way clichés come into being about the circumspect Hessian, the earthy Bavarian, the chilly Hanseatic. Do dialects really have the power to equip people with typical regional characteristics? How far do dialects contribute to regional identity?

Enlargement

The clichés were already there before the comedians. We need prejudices because we can’t form an objective judgement about everything. Such clichés are known the world over. One hangs the prejudices on the most conspicuous characteristics of a region – and that is, in fact, the dialect. In doing this, the evaluation of the regions is transferred to the language – Bavarian as the language of a holiday goal tends to be pleasing; Saxon as the language of a former industrial area to be ugly, if one gives credence to the surveys. (I make this qualification because, as someone who grew up elsewhere, I find all the dialects equally pleasant.) To your last question: dialects are the mark of regional identity, the “symbolic geographic membership”, as a cultural geographer once called it.

What do you think about the effect of dialects on professional life: Can a Bavarian with a strong dialect make a career in northern Germany? How important is it really to have a good command of High German in Germany?

If he’s good at his job, a Bavarian can get to the top in northern Germany, and even a North German in Bavaria.
Dialect influences of course the first impression that a person makes, as soon as he opens his mouth. But were this impression to drown out everything else (which, one hopes, would occur only in the case of particularly biased and pig-headed people), then the fault lies with the listener who gives his prejudices free rein without forming an objective judgement about the whole person before him. Both the standard language and the regional languages are important in Germany; therefore language education should also go into the subject of the variety of dialects. Situations in the everyday life of the majority of Germans in which pure High German must be spoken are probably rather few. In fact, there is even an economically quite successful federal state that claims it can do everything – except speak High German*.

How is the relation of standard language to dialect in other European countries? Are the Germans more relaxed about dialects and the vernacular than are their European neighbours? In England, for example, many fear the loss of the “received pronunciation”. They look upon Estuary English (an accent from south-east England), spoken by some politicians and celebrities, as a “lower-class accent”, vulgar and shabby.

Enlargement

My feeling is that the Germans, especially the southern Germans, the Austrians and of course the Swiss, are quite relaxed about their dialects. It seems to me similar in Italy. Norway is the European country where dialects are strongest. In Great Britain and France, the old agricultural society disappeared earlier in the wake of state centralisation and the old dialects were in a worse position. Germany lies somewhere in the middle between Norway and France. As for Great Britain, the aftermath of the English class society has led to the habitual assessment of language not only according to regional characteristics but also social ones. Still, on British television you can hear news presenters with regional accents, which is more than you can do in Germany.

Back to the Bavarian dictionary: What word are you currently occupied with?

I’ve just written the article on “Biest”: Biest is the first milk a cow gives after it calves, so thick that in many places it is grudged the calf and used instead to prepare special foods – for human beings. The next article in line is on the word group round the verb “bieten” [i.e. to offer].

Prof. Rowley, thank you for speaking with me. As a Northern German, I should now say in Low German: “Ick bin di dankbor för dat goote gespreek. Hol di gaut un stöt di nich vörn Fout” [i.e., I’m grateful to you for the good conversation. Take care of yourself and don’t stub your big toe].

And I reply: “Vergelt’s Gott und pfiat Eahna” [i.e., God be with you and protect you].

Prof. Anthony Rowley is director of the Bavarian Academy of the Sciences.

Born and raised in Yorkshire in northern England, Rowley moved to Germany in the 1970’s. Since 1988, he has been at work on the Bavarian Dictionary and taught as a dialect researcher at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

* Allusion to an advertising slogan of the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg. (Translator’s note)

Bibliography Commission for Dialect Research of the Bavarian Academy of the Sciences (ed.): Bayerisches Wörterbuch, Band 1. A - Bazi (i.e., Bavarian Dictionary, Vol. 1. A - Bazi) Oldenbourg-Verlag 2002. 812 pages. ISBN: 3-486-56629-6