Austrian dialect
I noticed on previous trips to Graz that there's some cute curiosities to the Graz (and Austrian dialect). For instance, words that have "ei", in hochdeutsch are pronounced like the diphthong 'i' in "mine" (/aɪ/. But here it's still quite separated as consecutive vowels: an /e/ or /ɛ/ followed by /i/. So "zwei" (two) is /tsfei/ rather than the more standard /tsfaɪ/.
What's caught my attention on this trip, though, has been the vowel shifts. I first started noticing them during Cortona, Italy, after spending so much time with Alfred and his wife, Annie. I could catch bits of their conversation and hear "zwa" instead of "zwei" (not so surprising since in Plattdeutsch it's "zwo"), but more surprisingly: "einfoch" instead of "einfach" (simple) and "Parkplotz" instead of "Parkplatz" (parking lot). The latter one I had to comment on because it just connoted a funny image for me of cars plopping down from the air into their spots.
But last night at dinner with Nick and Chris, there was a large group of students and I heard one question "Was moch' ich..." instead of "Was mach' ich" ("what do I", lit. "what make I..."). I forget the rest of the sentence now, but the funny thing was that right after the moch/mach switch, he said another word with the 'ach' combo without switching it to 'och'.
What's caught my attention on this trip, though, has been the vowel shifts. I first started noticing them during Cortona, Italy, after spending so much time with Alfred and his wife, Annie. I could catch bits of their conversation and hear "zwa" instead of "zwei" (not so surprising since in Plattdeutsch it's "zwo"), but more surprisingly: "einfoch" instead of "einfach" (simple) and "Parkplotz" instead of "Parkplatz" (parking lot). The latter one I had to comment on because it just connoted a funny image for me of cars plopping down from the air into their spots.
But last night at dinner with Nick and Chris, there was a large group of students and I heard one question "Was moch' ich..." instead of "Was mach' ich" ("what do I", lit. "what make I..."). I forget the rest of the sentence now, but the funny thing was that right after the moch/mach switch, he said another word with the 'ach' combo without switching it to 'och'.