Robert Peters wrote: >It is Saechsisch, the German dialect spoken in Saxony. It was the dialect >Wagner spoke. (Now imagine this giant and guru speaking a dialect which >always has been the laughingstock of the other German tribes.) 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. There is not a single German dialect that is not a butt of humor somewhere in Germany, some of course more than others. John Dalmas [log in to unmask]