Americans can't understand us?!!

Calboner

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When I was in France, I noticed in some translated American books that the text had been "translated from the American by XXXX."
There seemed to be an explicit assumption that "the American" and "the English" were different dialects.
I remember the first time I saw a book in German that was described on its title page as "translated from the American." I regard such a phrase as silly in any case (you could read the entire book in its original language and have no clue to the country of origin of the author), but in this instance the silliness was augmented by the fact that the author was Canadian (by birth, upbringing, and most of his life's residency). Imagine what German-speaking people would think if we described English translations of Dürrenmatt as "translated from the Swiss" and translations of Thomas Bernhard as "translated from the Austrian." :rolleyes:
 

B_stanmarsh14

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vince

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I remember the first time I saw a book in German that was described on its title page as "translated from the American." I regard such a phrase as silly in any case (you could read the entire book in its original language and have no clue to the country of origin of the author), but in this instance the silliness was augmented by the fact that the author was Canadian (by birth, upbringing, and most of his life's residency). Imagine what German-speaking people would think if we described English translations of Dürrenmatt as "translated from the Swiss" and translations of Thomas Bernhard as "translated from the Austrian." :rolleyes:
This is true. However most Germans would not understand Thomas Bernhard if he read his works in his native Austrian dialect. It is very different sounding although the written language is the same. I have a good friend from Salzberg and when she speaks "Austrian", our friends from Düsseldorf can barely understand her. They call her a "Mountain German" :rolleyes:
 

Calboner

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This is true. However most Germans would not understand Thomas Bernhard if he read his works in his native Austrian dialect. It is very different sounding although the written language is the same.
I could not make any sense of this until I figured out that by "dialect" but you must have meant "accent." Dialects of German differ in vocabulary, syntax, and morphology, not just phonetics, so speaking German with the accent of a particular region and speaking the dialect of that region are two quite different things.
 

helgaleena

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Why has nobody gotten started on the 'help desk' accents of India? We need closed captioning to comprehend that English sometimes-- and I studied Sanskrit for screw's sakes.
 

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I had problems communicating when I moved from the west coast to the east coast.

There were many memorable times when someone spoke to me and I either couldn't understand the accent, or I didn't understand the local slang. As someone else mentioned, only the less educated were completely incomprehensible to me. Sometimes when people spoke, it sounded like a record playing at the wrong speed, decipherable, but it took conscious effort to comprehend what they were saying. It went the other way, too. Sometimes I could understand them, but they could not understand me. It took me years before I could imitate the local accent accurately, and I feel like many people considered me an outsider until I could!
 
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