John Dalmas wrote:

>Although he may have retained a Saxon accent, I doubt if Wagner spoke the
>Saxon dialect exclusively once he had gone to school, learned High German
>and gone out in the world.  After all Wagner was from Leipzig, a large,
>sophisticated city, and not from "them thar hills" of Saxon Switzerland.

Well, I don't know for sure how Wagner spoke, too, but I know that the
people from Leipzig have a very strong accent and that it was absolutely
not common (and not expected) to speak High German (which was, by the way,
a relatively new invention) in the 18th and 19th century.

>There is not a single German dialect that is not a butt of humor somewhere
>in Germany, some of course more than others.

This is not true.  Saechsisch sounds extraordinary strange and therefore
funny to the ears of especially the West Germans.  When a comedian uses
Saechsisch it is not very important what he says:  people start to giggle
right from the beginning.

And why not ridicule Wagner a little bit? It is my antidote against the
stiff Bayreuth routine and the Ring bathos.  It rehumanizes wanna-be
semigod little Richard and that's fine with me.

Have a Schubert kind of day,
Robert Peters
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