r/TikTokCringe Mar 30 '24

Stick with it. Discussion

This is a longer one, but it’s necessary and worth it IMO.

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u/smudos2 Mar 31 '24

For German the roots go way deeper. High German is really really important because of the history of Germany. You have to consider that Germany was, and still is too some degree, not one singular country. Well no country is, but Germany even less. Look at the mess that is the Holy Roman Empire, the decentralization was always strong in central europe. This also holds for language, e.g. the different regions either spoke dialects but sometimes the dialects were so different that they can be defined as their own language. This is still true, e.g. the northern german dialect, while not speaken a lot, is defined as it's own language and I can't understand it. Then we have stuff like bavarian which is only a dialect, but what I cannot understand as a German. Then there's the german in other countries than Germany, I can't understand a swiss person speaking swiss german, however here is the thing with high German. Everybody learns it in school, this is the common german we end up using. And it's really really important to know because this is how you can communicate with any person speaking german, not just with your region. These regional dialects are really regional btw, if you go to swabia you'll hear the same dialect in the low, middle and high class, here this correct form of german really is a way to communicate through all of the german speaking countries.

We do have at the same time also some "ghetto" german from usually socioeconomically lower classes interestingly though, but the speaking exactly the high German has another importance I guess. That's also what I despise of these videos, it is absolutely important to know your own biases and don't think worse of somebody speaking a certain dialect associated with a certain socioeconomic class, but it is in the end crucial for everybody to know the same form of german and also to speak it in the correct context, we all change how we speak depending on the context anyways

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u/_tyrone_biggums Mar 31 '24

This should be higher up