"When dialect dies out, däd ao a cultural asset vorschwad": elementary school students in Baden-Württemberg
Photo: Marijan Murat/ dpa
A new umbrella organization for dialects wants to fight against the decline in dialect, especially among children.
"When dialect aussterba däded, däd ao a cultural asset vorwinda," said Markus Rösler, member of the Baden-Württemberg state parliament, who comes from Gerlingen in the Ludwigsburg district and speaks a broad Swabian dialect himself, the German Press Agency in Stuttgart.
While dialect is being used more frequently in the older population, it is being lost more and more in the younger age group.
According to Rösler, the new association wants to appeal to younger people with a dialect prize on social media and promote the expansion of dialect offers in daycare centers and schools.
Children in Baden-Württemberg hardly speak dialect anymore.
The Ludwig Uhland Institute at the University of Tübingen determined last year that in grades 1 and 2 of elementary schools, only between 11 and 15.3 percent of boys and girls speak dialect.
Almost 13,600 students from 700 classes and more than 705 teachers were surveyed in the Tübingen study.
More than 50 representatives of dialect and dialect associations, dialect research and dialect artists have now decided to found a state-wide umbrella organization for dialects.
These included the Muettersproch Society and the Swabian Dialect Association.
The association should start its work before the summer break.
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Rösler is the main initiator of the founding of the association.
For him, dialect has no disadvantages, but is an advantage in everyday life.
Dialect is a piece of home and cultural identity.
A nurse has a different approach to her patient if both speak dialect, he argues, because then a "sympathetic bond" develops.
And: “You can sometimes express yourself much more precisely and accurately with dialect, especially where emotions are involved.” Dialect serves to identify people culturally: “You also like regional food, you can identify with it.”
Rösler, on the other hand, can't do anything with written German: "I've been neutered," he said.
“I don't identify with written German.
It's like the hammer or the computer - you have to use it because sometimes it's necessary.
But I don't associate it with emotions.«
him/dpa