I have a (rather vague) question for the German speakers on my f'list

[sholio]

Of which I know there are at least a couple of you!

There is a line in an original short story I'm writing that I'm having trouble with. My protagonist used to live in Germany and he's approached by a woman who is obviously, from her accent, a German immigrant. What I'm trying to figure out is how to describe her accent from his point of view -- I just need an adjective to indicate what sort of regional accent it sounds like to him, because I presume he'd be able to narrow it down quite a bit more than "Deutsch accent". I was kinda thinking she's from Silesia (as he is), but does it make any sense to say that someone has a Silesian accent if they are speaking English? (This is circa 1920s, btw, so Silesia was German when they lived there.)

Comments

[ratcreature]

There are obviously degrees to mutual intelligiblilty. And it is not surprising with the Romance languages. I think some linguist consider all Western Romance languages to be a dialect continuum, especially back when there were still more regional languages alive to bridge the national ones, so it is similar to the different German dialects. And of course you can get the gist of what someone is saying even if you just get every third word and some gestures.

What I had in mind for "mutual intelligiblilty" was holding a fluent conversation at normal speed without either having to switch their language, and not have any serious trouble. Like the way an American can talk with a Brit. Sure there are a couple of words that may be different, but overall if you know American or British English you will understand the other (at least the standard vesions), no matter the minor differences in vocabulary and pronounciation without either speaker making a conscious "switch". With German dialects that are far apart geographically it is not like that.

And yeah, Platt is the same as "Low German".