#ugh i'm so sorry Vice Chancellor

[eisbecherovka]

hello this is me again, thank you very much for your tips for learning german! ♥ i'm really sorry to bother you again but do you have any tips for learning austrian german too? i live in austria and whenever i think my german is getting good, someone speaks austrian to me and my world shatters lol. it's pretty frustrating and there are no textbooks ugh. how do you cope with it? (and btw as a czech native i must say that i'm incredibly impressed by your czech, keep going!) sorry for the spam!!

no problem! austrian german as a foreign language is a topic i’m kind of into and rarely get to talk about :D

apart from practicing dialect irl with people (which is really very very very important), the most helpful thing for me has been listening to austrian music. songtexte.com often has the original lyrics and then a “german translation” of the song in hochdeutsch. compare, say, the original and the translation of something like brenna tuats guat (which is highkey incomprehensible when you don’t know dialect) by hubert von goisern:

Aber hoazen domma en woazen / Und de ruabn und den kukuruz=Aber heizen tun wir mit Weizen / und Rüben und mit Mais

etc. some bands to check out are seiler & speer, eav, voodoo jürgens. some of falco’s stuff veers into wienerisch and you should be listening to falco anyway because he’s a legend. there are more austrian musicians who use dialekt but these are the ones i know and can recommend in good faith 

HERE is an austrian-german dictionary: http://www.ostarrichi.org/ 

finally, some simple tips that i think are applicable to most of austria that might help you out. i’m assuming you don’t live in vorarlberg. god help you if you do.

disclaimer: i am not a linguist, i am not a professional austrian, i am not fluent in any austrian dialect. these are just my own observations and as such they might be wrong. additionally, austrian dialects are highly regional and as such some of my tips might only apply to carinthian. feel free to correct me but please be nice about it lol

a -> o or oa, depending. was -> wos

“schau ma” constructions. schauen wir -> schaun mia -> schau ma. common are ha(u)mma (as in hamma des? - haben wir das?) gemma/geh ma (let’s go!) schau ma mal (we’ll see/let’s see), red ma (später) let’s talk later

al -> oi, most famous is alter -> oida. also halb -> hoibe. this is not done in carinthia, we say olta and holbe 

ö -> e(a). hörst du -> heast, österreich -> estareich

du is often optional especially in (rhetorical) questions

adding -e to numbers for some reason? um 7 uhr -> um siebene, halb acht -> holbe acht

will -> wü, viel -> vü

u -> ua sometimes, see hubert above. very common is gut -> guat

ist -> is (isch(t) in tirol and vorarlberg)

-ch dropped at ends of pronouns. ich -> i, mich -> mi, dich -> di

r -> a, especially at ends of words. again alter -> olta, kurz -> kuaz

ei -> a or oa. heim -> ham, heiß -> haß, zwei -> zwa (sometimes zwo(a)). also applies to the articles ein/e/n etc.

ein/e -> a, einen -> (o)an

tun + infinitive (i’m sure there’s a rule as to when to do this, but i haven’t figured it out, maybe it’s like present progressive in english?). essen wir geschwind -> tu ma gschwind essen. sie produzieren milch -> sie tun milch produzieren. lorena schläft -> die lorena tut schlofn

ge- -> g-. geschwind -> gschwind, gekauft -> gkaft (Carinthian?), gegangen -> gangan

kommen -> kumman, gekommen -> kumman

articles in front of people’s names all the time, whether it’s your family, friends, coworkers, colleagues, pets, livestock, disgraced ex-vice chancellor… all of them get a der or a die in front of their name. don’t do this in writing

der -> da, die -> de

prepositions of movement. this might be carinthia/styria specific, idk. hinauf -> aufe or aufi, hinab -> obe/obi, ume/umi is like to the side, hinaus -> ause/ausi (i know in vorarlberg they say ufi and usi)

and there’s more but this post is getting too long

apart from that, austrian german has a different speech rhythm than german german, even a little different from austrian standard german that you might be learning in classes, if you’re taking any. this one depends big time on where you are in the country - salzburger don’t talk like viennese who don’t talk like styrians who don’t talk like carinthians, etc. this sounds pretty bad, but eavesdropping on people on public transit can be a good way to learn this. barring that, go to a cafe, bar, restaurant, shopping center, event, whatever, where you can hear people and listen to them talk. and try to do some talking yourself.

if you keep your ears open for dialect, you WILL get better at it, it just might take a little while, so be patient and again good luck :)