Frankisch

It is kind of funny... I have been reading a little bit abut places that we could potentially move and something made me laugh. We currently live in Bavaria. When you think of Germany, you think of Bavaria. The castles, the clothing, the traditions. I have mentioned before, that within Bavaria, we live in a region called Franconia. We actually live in "Upper Franconia." There is a distinct difference, and if you ask the locals, they will not say that they are Bavarian, instead, they will proudly state that they are "Franken." The funny thing about "Franken" is that they actually speak many words that can't even be found in a German Dictionary. They have their own slang. I equate it to learning what "fixin to" meant, when moving to South Carolina to go to College. Coming from the north, I had never heard that phrase. In return, my roommates had never heard the term "elastic" (a rubberband), nor had they heard anyone use the phrase, That is "wicked" cool. So in Franken, they use a "Frankisch" slang. One of the things they often do, is put a "-la" on the end of a word. For example: Instead of "Brot" (for bread), they might say "Brotla". They use this -la on all sorts of words. On the way to Czech a few weekends ago, Bryan accidentally bumped into this older man at the bakery. The man smiled and rattled off something in German that I did not understand at all. I thought it was just my poor understanding of German, but when we asked Camden's friend (who is German) what he said, his friend said, "I have absolutely no idea." Wow! It is amazing that in such a short distance (only about 1 1/2 hours from where we live), someone can speak a totally different dialect of German. Yikes - we are in for many new lessons :-)