Franconian Phonetics

Having taken another trip to Franconia just yesterday, I was confronted again by their extraordinary way of spelling a word out loud. Franconians cannot differentiate between hard and soft consonants. I used to be one of them and found it quite natural to ask whether to spell a person’s name with a “hartes b” (that in itself is pronounced: hardes) oder “weiches b”. Our Franconian ears are not trained to hear the difference and for the first twenty years of my life, I thought all Germans asked to spell like that. I actually had to leave the country to learn more about this.

The other day I had to call a local person in Schweinfurt/Franconia and had to leave my name: Shipley. Well, of course, it is foreign and needs spelling. When I came to the “p” part, I pronounced it very clearly and after the initial question of “Har(d)es oder weiches b”, I repeated it once more, almost spitting on the receiver. The caller’s third attempt came to decipher my “p” and so I offered “p wie in Paul”. He was very happy to repeat “b wie in Baul”, but I am sure he at least knew how to spell it. Actually, common nouns are usually spelled correctly even if mispronounced.

When I was in school we used to laugh about this joke, and we did not know it was about our special linguistic species. Here it goes:

Why are Franconians a bit worried when they see a car with the plaque “GB” following them?
They are worried because they think it means “Griminalbolizei”. The proper spelling is “Kriminalpolizei”, which means Criminal Investigation Department, or in short: police.

We used to think that was so funny. How would anybody be so stupid not to know how to spell that….?!? At least we thought it was about Franconians not being able to spell.

Our son Thomas could not understand why his grandparents always called him Domas. Once Thomas politely tried to make his grandmother aware of this and pronounced it correctly for her. Her Franconian ears could not filter out any difference and she answered:” Of course, I know your name is Domas.” He gave up after that.

Once after I had just moved here to Oberursel/Hesse, I was taking the elevator and returned a person’s greeting by saying: “Guten Morgen!” Unbeknownst to me it must have come out as “Guden Morgen” and he immediately asked if I was from the area of Schweinfurt.

When our daughter Margo was born, Franconians wanted to know why we had given her a boy’s name. We pronounce it Margo (the French way with a long o sound at the end) and they heard “Margo”. But the boy’s name Marco is, of course, also pronounced “Margo”. Not knowing the spelling they heard Margo, but perceived Marco.

Shopping at Kaufhof (a department store chain) in Schweinfurt is always a pleasure when the cashier asks us whether we have a “baebec” card. “Baebec” is Franconian English for “Payback”, which is some kind of bonus card. The first time I heard “baebec”, I was really taken aback and wondered what kind of commercial newcomer this was. It did not sound English at all.

Here are a few more:

*Glasse! = Klasse!! (Toll!)

*Budenschnitzel (Bude = booth) = Putenschnitzel (turkey cutlets)

*Beder = Peter

Yesterday my family in Franconia was commenting on how proper my German has become.

Comments

  1. With friendly permission from Juergen to post this here:

    Hallo Shibbley,
    danks for the Frangonian mail. I never undersdood why other dribes are
    hearing something differend when the Frangonians speak.. Can they pronounce
    the Frangonian word ” Oozullds Buddlesbaa”? No they cannot. This Frangonian
    word is a “shibbolet”, meaning a key to understand the origin of the
    person. They have tried this test in the Old Destament. In order to
    differentiate between two different dribes they made a test. Language was
    the key to find out whether the (biblical) person was from a certain region
    in the Holy Land. The tested person had to pronounce the word “shibbolet”
    The pronunciation gave it away whether that person came from that region
    and was hence delling the druth. Bad luck if that person could not
    pronounce the word “shibbolet”…..Does this ring a bell? Yes it does.:
    your last name “Shipley” sounds quite like the old biblical word
    “shibbolet” and can be transformed into: “shibbleyolet”. Let the
    Frangonians just say that word. Anyone pronouncing it perfectly is a full
    member of the Frangonian dribe.
    Your Bavarian friend,
    Jürgen

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