Why English doesn't use accents

Re:Why English doesn't use accents by lompad on Monday July 07, 2025 @05:25AM (#44488366)

Germany is similar. Especially in more rural areas, a couple villages away people are going to have a hard time understanding you.

Though there's typically a common dialect variant everybody speaks, usually the one spoken by the largest city in the region.

E.g. every middle-franconian understands Nuremberg franconian dialect and is able to talk in a way they would understand.

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Re:Why English doesn't use accents by yieldcrv on Monday July 07, 2025 @07:38AM (#44489230)

I'm American

My ear has just gotten to the point of noticing German dialects, and spotting the quizzical looks of other German/Austrian/Swiss people in the group

Fascinating. I feel like they had 1,000 years to resolve this

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Re:Why English doesn't use accents by adonovan on Monday July 07, 2025 @08:13AM (#44489542)

1000? Prussia dissolved only in 1947 and the nation state of Germany was reunified only in 1990.

In any case, communication technology (trains, TVs) is a greater determinant of dialect than government.

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Re:Why English doesn't use accents by yieldcrv on Monday July 07, 2025 @10:19AM (#44490645)

suboptimal outcome for sure

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Re:Why English doesn't use accents by fakedang on Monday July 07, 2025 @08:25AM (#44489642)

Heck, Swiss German is like this lol.

My cofounder's wife, during a parents together at school, was "advised" by some of the mothers to not "hang around those" mothers because they're stranger folk. Turns out, they lived 1.5 miles away in the next village.

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Re:Why English doesn't use accents by jason-johnson on Monday July 07, 2025 @09:19AM (#44490108)

well, if you ignore the current country borders then "German" would encompass a large portion of Switzerland and the Netherlands. So, with that assumption, I would be surprised if Italian had more dialects than German.

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