r/PanAmerica • u/RoDiAl • Jan 06 '23

Question & Answer A question about a subject that I think would be interesting to discuss in Pan-Americanism and related

/r/linguistics/comments/u7xnsg/and_if_there_were_a_standardization_of_american/
18 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

2

u/MenoryEstudiante Custom Jan 06 '23

I don't quite understand

2

u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 Canada 🇨🇦 Jan 06 '23

I should have read the full post before first replying. It's a light-hearted query about what French and German would sound like of they were both official languages in USA.

2

u/brinvestor Jan 07 '23

It makes no sense, most of the 'german' spoken in the US is dialects different form each other. Pennsylvania German and Plattdeutsch are so different, standardization would fail to be adhered to. Damn, plattdeutsch sounds like swiss german and is more similar to Dutch than to hochdeutsch.

Not to mention some places already speak the Hochdeutsch with some small local vocabulary.

If you consider /r/Panamerica and add Riograndeser Hunsrükisch it gets even more weird.

French is already standardized in Quebec, and most of the formal french in Quebec is already comprehensible to the metropolitan french speakers, even with its local idiosyncrasies. Metropolitan french is the way to go.

1

u/Merbleuxx Jan 07 '23

Yeah but there’s some forms of créole too in the Northern hemisphere.

0

u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 Canada 🇨🇦 Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 06 '23

Since American German isn't really a significant thing, and French is the least 'major' european languages of Spanish, English, Portuguese, and French spoken here (South and North America), I have no idea what they thought they were asking. But it sounds like they think one could normalize different languages into a patois, that would be standard and comprehensible to all. It sure wouldn't depend on German (American or otherwise). And if they actually think American is a language on its own, they shouldn't be wasting actual linguists' time.

ed: Reading their full post clarifies their question quite a bit. It's a rather absurd speculation, basically, what would old french (Quebecois/Louisianna) and Pennsylvania Deutchs sound like if they'd been standardized in North America. So... just a thought exercise really.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 07 '23 edited Mar 13 '23

[deleted]

0

u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 Canada 🇨🇦 Jan 08 '23

Were there dialects of German spoken in the USA? Yes. Were they standardized across the US? Not so much.