I’m a German native who studied linguistics (ok, computational linguistics with a minor in phonetics and phonology), but I basically only speak my regional dialect well. I was visiting a friend in Berlin once and a stranger in a bar complimented me that I “speak good German for a foreigner”.
I regarded it as a potential evidence for my unfounded and highly debateable hypothesis that the dialect we speak in the region is not in fact a dialect, but its own language.
I’m a German native who studied linguistics (ok, computational linguistics with a minor in phonetics and phonology), but I basically only speak my regional dialect well. I was visiting a friend in Berlin once and a stranger in a bar complimented me that I “speak good German for a foreigner”.
Hey that sounds like studying linguistics to me! Pun mildly intended.
That’s gotta be a bit of a gut punch though…
I regarded it as a potential evidence for my unfounded and highly debateable hypothesis that the dialect we speak in the region is not in fact a dialect, but its own language.