Red cabbage instead of red cabbage and turnips instead of carrots: the Bavarian language is disappearing more and more from everyday use, regrets dialect researcher Sepp Obermeier.
He calls for schools and politics to change direction.
Konzell - People who speak Bavarian are discriminated against at work and at the university, says Sepp Obermeier, the chairman of the Bavarian Language Association.
It shouldn't be the case that a woman fails an interview because she "speaks the ancient, infinitely valuable and beautiful cultural language of her country." On the occasion of Mother Language Day on Tuesday, February 21, he calls for the use of Bavarian in German lessons and in of politics.
What particularly bothers him is not just the disappearance of the spoken dialect.
He is particularly interested in the written language, in which southern German terms are becoming less and less important.
An example: In Bavaria it is called "blue cabbage" and not "red cabbage" - even the state government is wrong.
Dialect researchers: Bavarian instead of the "German linguistic uniformity"
Obermeier tells of a calendar in which the Bavarian Ministry of Agriculture advertises the consumption of seasonal vegetables: "In a federal German linguistic uniformity" it refers "to carrots, beetroot and red cabbage instead of the correct Southern German terms yellow beets, beetroot and red cabbage." The dialect lover is disappointed with the state government – and would like it to do more to preserve and combat discrimination in the regional language.
This not only applies to Bavarian, but also to Franconian and Swabian.
Obermeier sees one way of promoting the regional dialects again in school lessons.
The Ministry of Education could, for example, develop guidelines on how the Bavarian language will be taught again in German lessons - also in its written form.
He cites the brochure “Österreichisches Deutsch” from the Austrian Ministry of Education as a model.
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UNESCO: Bavarian language threatened with extinction
Incidentally, UNESCO agrees with him: as early as 2009, it classified the Bavarian dialect as endangered for the first time.
That is why the Bund Bairischer Sprache, based in Konzell, is committed to ensuring that the dialect continues to be used in families, in kindergartens, in schools and also on official occasions.
A literature expert, on the other hand, recently explained in an interview with
Merkur.de
why almost only elite circles now speak good Bavarian.
(dpa/elb)
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