[Cz-L] Sitwell and dialects

A couple of comments on the day’s correspondence:
The very mention of the name, Sitwell, brings out my spiritual ancestor, Vlad Tepes, in me. Impaling would have been appropriate in his case. I first learned of that sick s.o.b. in 1994 when I picked up all available travel books on
Romania in preparation for a visit and some location scouting. He reminded me that the English are an interesting group who breed some of the most admirable people but concurrently also some of the most despicable people in the world.  They were among the most active slavers in the days of slavery but it was in England that the anti-slavery movements began. 

Regarding Czernowitzer or Austrian or German German, to most of us, the dialect of others in our own language usually sounds wrong.  There is a Berliner in my building and her German to me sounds like Cockney to a Brit or
Brooklyn to an American.  
 
I had a Schwaben neighbor a few decades ago and when I tried what little German I had on her, she said, “Aber Sie schprechen Hoch Deutsch.”  To me it was the only Deutsch I knew.  

In 1953, the Austrian actor Joseph Furst asked me if I could do a Viennese dialect for a CBC International radio
broadcast to Austria.  Without having a clue, I said, “Yes, of course,” rather than lose out on some potential talent
fees.  The cast of four fortunately had three older actors just arrived from Vienna and I found the lilt in their
speech easy to ape.  But I didn’t find it much different from what I recalled about Czernowitzer Deutsch.

One of the best stories about dialects I found in dear Lucca’s biography. It was one of the most memorable bits in her book.  At one point she had a secretarial job in an Israeli engineering company where nobody spoke German.  But they brought in a consultant from Germany who prided himself as being an expert on German dialects.  He could tell you what part of Germany you came from after hearing you speak just a couple of sentences.  One day in their lunchroom one of the Israeli engineers sat down with him and addressed him in Yiddish which the German found he could understand.  Later he said to Lucca that this was the first time he heard a German dialect that he couldn’t pinpoint.  He had never before heard Yiddish; didn’t know what it was;  and he
just couldn’t figure out where the man would have come from.

[Andy Halmay]

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Received on 2012-12-14 20:08:01