Swabian German - Description and Character

Description and Character

The dialect ranges from a 'standard' Swabian, spoken in Stuttgart, to a variety of stronger, thicker forms found in the countryside. Older people can often tell the town a person comes from merely by hearing their accent.

Swabian is difficult to understand for speakers of Standard German, not just for its pronunciation but because it contains some vocabulary that differs altogether from Standard German. For example, jam in Standard German is Marmelade while in Swabian it is Gsälz.

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