Try walking across a hill 1n Germany, and see how much the language changes. Until the Duden, the Germans could not even talk to each other.
“Neanderthal” means from the next vally, you know.
I've heard that the dialects persist in Germany. Hard to imagine how.
Hi! That was a very interesting piece of information. I googled up Duden but was not able to find relevant information.
Can you point me to more information about this?
This is one of my hobbies, learning about standardization of old languages via “new” media.
For example, before Radio most Italians could barely understand each other. However when Radio chose the Florentine pronunciation, all of Italy slowly standardized to it.
Look at China, where now the Mandarin pronunciation rules are “killing” regional dialects
In India, the Bombay Bollywood Hindi has become the standardized Hindi
In our own United States, we have moved progressively towards a Mid-west accent, as our TV broadcasters have favored that accent