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"Germany is a country" - Delusional Cosplayers
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2026
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Well, countries are all more or less delusions, yet made more or less real by the authority of states.
The real delusion in this story is that German is a language. From what I've heard, take three Germans from different regions, all speaking their mother tongue and they'll have just as much trouble understanding each other as three Spaniards from diverse parts of Spain†. But while the Spaniards will be well aware that one of them is speaking Galician, one Castellan and another Catalonian, each German is convinced that he's speaking German and that the others are speaking German in a weird way. Spaniards will likely speak Castellan, if not as their first then as their second language. Germans will all be familiar with a standard German but not really identify it as a distinct language from their own. Same story in Italy.
†: Assuming none of the Spaniards in the example are Basque.
germany has about 4-5 truly difficult dialects I'd say. (being an native speaker) I could understand every dialect after being immersed for a couple of hours except for bavarian tho 😅
there are a lot more local accents and dialects but Sächsisch, Pfälzerisch & Bayrisch are the ones that are really difficult to understand even for german natives from other areas. Hessisch partially as well. These are all bound to their local areas.
I'm speaking Hochdeutsch ("plain german" which should be the german y'all are learning in school) but there is also Plattdeutsch (spoken mostly in the north) which is it's own language that is on it's way to extinction.
hochdeutsch actually refers to the "higher altitude" dialects from the south like bavarian, saxon or swabian...
you actually mean standarddeutsch
No idea, if that's a regional thing that "Hochdeutsch" primarily means Southern German to you, but here in South Germany, I doubt anyone would be aware of your definition and everyone understands "Hochdeutsch" to mean "Standard High German".
My dictionary does list the Southern German meaning, but it's listed as the secondary meaning.