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 [log in to unmask]