lvkleist's comments

lvkleist | 8 years ago | on: On almost every indicator, Germany’s south is doing better than its north

Having lived in Berlin and Freiburg, I can confirm this. I also find it interesting that most in southern Baden-Württemberg still refer to their dialect as "Allemanic"(as in the ancient confederation of Germanic tribes, the "Allemani" Excerpt from Wikipedia: "First mentioned by Cassius Dio in the context of the campaign of Caracalla of 213, the Alemanni captured the Agri Decumates in 260, and later expanded into present-day Alsace, and northern Switzerland, leading to the establishment of the Old High German language in those regions."). The french word for Germans, "Allemands", reflects these old tribal boundaries as well. It's easy to forget that Germany as a unified state is young, but try sometime watching someone from Berlin or Hamburg attempt to decipher a sentence spoken in the rural Allemanic dialect, it's pretty futile.(Note: this doesn't really apply to larger towns like Freiburg anymore. You have to drive half an hour or so into the countryside, and find an older person. Young people often prefer to speak Standard German nowadays).
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