Heh, if Anker Simonsen had said “Smaragd-Stadt” is pronounced “Smaragd-Stadt” it would have been 100% correct. I snicker thinking about it. : )

Keera, if I learned Norwegian in North Dakota, which variant would I have learned?

@ Igelino (41) - I did not mean to imply that the “Spitzen-Stein” pronunciation was extremely unusual, just that it is a local regionalism, and not the generally “correct” pronunciation that the blanket pronouncement (@26) implied.

@ Keera (43) - Although the German codex for spelling and grammar it not legally binding for the general public, it is codified in the regulations for all official (government) business, including schools, and it carries an extreme amount of weight for all German publishing institutions. This is why the recent (long overdue) update was so hotly contested. Many Germans believe that there is (or should be) only one correct way to write or spell, and are uncomfortable (even hostile) towards a system that requires or allows a writer to make a choice among options.

Back to @ 41 (pronunciation): Every region does have their own local dialect (Bavarians and Frisians have extreme difficulty understanding each other), but there very much IS a standard for “correct” German pronunciation (“Hochdeutsch“), it is codified (in the “Duden” reference books, among elsewhere), and it is heard in virtually every national television and radio news broadcast in Germany (some local announcers do speak with more of an accent). This standard pronunciation is so regular that most German dictionaries do not bother to list pronunciations, unless the entry has a non-standard or foreign pronunciation (you have to refer to a “dictionary of pronunciation” to get listings for every word).

Lola @42, that’s a reference I’m not following, unless you mean traveling with a ball. I doubt that’s what the 80-something female interviewee meant.

The comment at 26 isn’t necessarily about a standard, and so I perceived the comment at 28 as a rebuke, and I wanted to reduce some of the spin it seemed to have.

The laws about standard German are “Rechtschreiben” ie “proper writing”. They deal primarily with spelling. The conventions about how to speak aren’t laws, and the actual pronunciations vary from region to region. Even schoolteachers speak dialect in many areas. Like I said in 36: very few people speak “standard” German in their own homes or at the local market. And even at work, if the people you deal with speak a similar dialect, you don’t speak “standard” German.

So all I’m saying is, from the point of view of common usage, the pronunciation in post 26 is acceptable, and in some regions it is correct. From the point of view of “standard” pronunciation, post 28 is correct, but post 28 implies that 26’s pronunciation is rare, which isn’t really true.

I happen to live in a country that has no official spoken version of its language (no “King’s Norwegian”; Harald V speaks with a Bærum accent) and two official written versions and as many regional accents/dialects as there are mountain tops. I have been asked which Norwegian I speak (”bokmål” or “nynorsk”) and have to tell people neither, like a typical Norwegian. Some dialects come very close to one or the other of our two written languages but are not them. The easiest way to start a fight in Norway, is to pick one of the written languages and claim it’s a load of cr*p. (I wish I were kidding.)

We have a weekly radio program that explores all things language related to Norway or Norwegian. There I heard an interview with some of the Norwegian speakers in the US; I understood every word even though they’d Norwegianized some English words, which standing alone would make no sense, but made sense in context. (”Travel” became their word for “walk” even though it sounds like the Norwegian word for “busy”.) Quite fascinating to hear.