Day 99: A Dialect Debate in the Taxi
In a taxi from Frankfurt Airport to a conference in Darmstadt, Professor Ebeling (A), a linguist, gets talking to his driver, Norbert (B), a local man with two children.
How to study this lesson 3 steps
- Read the situation under the title. It says who is talking and how they know each other, which decides how politely they speak.
- Read the dialogue line by line with its translation, until every line makes sense. Point at (or tap) a German word to see what it means.
- Spend at least 30 minutes listening to native German, for example from the Resources page. It doesn't matter if you don't understand it yet.
Dialogue
Audio recordings are on the way. For now, each lesson is the dialogue with its English translation.
Keys: E hide English · ← → previous / next day · point at a word to see its meaning
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A
Zum Darmstadtium, bitte. Ich halte dort morgen den Eröffnungsvortrag und muss unterwegs noch meine Folien durchgehen.
To the Darmstadtium, please. I'm giving the opening talk there tomorrow and need to go through my slides on the way.
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B
Bei dem Verkehr auf der A5 haben Sie dafür reichlich Zeit. Worum geht's denn, wenn man fragen darf?
With the traffic on the A5, you'll have plenty of time for that. What's it about, if you don't mind me asking?
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A
Um meine These, dass die Dialekte aussterben, wenngleich die Älteren hier in Hessen natürlich noch fleißig babbeln.
About my thesis that dialects are dying out, even if the older people here in Hesse still happily natter away in theirs, of course.
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B
Da muss ich Ihnen widersprechen: Ich rede mit meinen Kindern jeden Tag Hessisch, und die sind zwölf und sechzehn.
I'll have to disagree with you there: I speak Hessian with my kids every day, and they're twelve and sixteen.
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A
Eine Familie ist noch keine Stichprobe. Und in der Schule sprechen Ihre Kinder doch bestimmt Hochdeutsch, oder?
One family doesn't make a sample. And at school your children surely speak standard German, don't they?
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B
Im Unterricht schon, aber sonst reden die Hessisch, sei es auf dem Schulhof, sei es im Handballverein.
In lessons, yes, but otherwise they speak Hessian, whether it's in the playground or at the handball club.
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A
Das ist Regiolekt, kein Dialekt im engeren Sinne, zumal die alten Wörter ja kaum noch jemand unter sechzig kennt.
That's a regiolect, not a dialect in the strict sense, especially as hardly anyone under sixty knows the old words any more.
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B
Sagen Sie das mal meiner Tochter: Die schreibt ihren Freundinnen auf Hessisch, und die antworten genauso. Das ist doch keine Rentnersprache!
Try telling my daughter that: she texts her friends in Hessian, and they write back the same way. That's no pensioners' language!
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A
Sie haben gerade meinen ganzen Vortrag zerlegt. Vielleicht heißt er jetzt „Totgesagte leben länger“, es sei denn, Sie wollen ihn selbst halten.
You've just taken my whole talk to pieces. Maybe it'll be called 'Reports of Their Death Are Greatly Exaggerated' now, unless you'd like to give it yourself.
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