Toadfish Monastery

A person from Andalucia may talk with a very heavy accent that other heavy accents (like the Argentinian porteño or certain Cuban or Paisa accents) may have trouble to follow, plus a myriad of specific vocabulary differences for everyday items, but the structure is the same and the verbs are for the most part the same. You may need clarification on an specific term but once you get past the accent idiosyncrasies, you will understand. In general terms, colloquially I could refer to them as 'dialects' but in reality they're not.

Last _{my perception of the different English varieties is relatively the same even with some of the most idiosyncratic African ones} Post

There are some minor structural differences between German dialects, mainly in the use of cases (e.g. Bavarian avoiding the genitive, using the dative instead) but the bulk of differences is in the vocabulary and the pronounciation.  But that is enough to make mutual understanding between them very difficult. So everyone has to learn High German to at least a degree. The local accent remains but for some major dialects speakers are essentially bilingual. They speak with the same 'tone' in both but there are worlds between the way they speak among themselves and with people from outside the local sociotope.

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Closer to Arabic then.

Last _{although that may be going a step further} Post

I thought no one actually ever spoke 'High' Arabic

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Then there are the slavic languages.

Last _{how far apart Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian really are?} Post

I only know that the liturgical language (church-slavonic) is actually old Bulgarian.

Ukrainian and Byelorussian split only in the 18th century (according to wikipedia). They (resp. the Ruthenian they are derived from) belong to the same language subgroup as Russian but are not Russian dialects. Again according to wiki they share about 2/3 of their vocabulary, and phonetic shifts seem to make up for a major part of the differences. So it looks to me more like a relation as between Friesian and Dutch than between Dutch and High German.

Last _{or similar to the difference between Icelandic and Faroese} Post

English as spoke in different counties can be impossible to understand due to accents mostly (soemtimes a few words). Some english accents are weird and wonderful, so they are.

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I guess a question is whether people can understand each other writing their speech down, if they can't understand each other speaking. Provided of course they use a phonetic script like the alphabet, not a semantic one as e.g. Chinese.

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LAST   yays the monastery is back   POST

Last _{Well, it never REALLY went away} Post

I get the impression it goes away temporarily more often and longer these days

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You notice more because your refresh more.

Last _{finally your shady ways on the time logged are coming back to bite you} Post

I do not refresh more than in the preceding years, less actually since I have a working DVD/BR drive again.
But rarely in the past did the forum go offline for more than an hour at a time.

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Last _{that's a refreshing answer} Post

I refresh this site more than I do my body.

Last _unsavoury Post