Berlinerisch, ick liebe dir

DOLORIS

ICK LIEBE

DIR

When we arrived in Berlin, I found myself unable to understand most of what people were saying. At first I thought I just needed an hour or two to shake off the Bayerisch and get the local accent in my ear, but the problem persisted. Stefan handled speaking and translating, but I was confused. Were people just speaking too quickly for me? Had I forgotten hoch Deutsch? Or was Berlin such an international melting pot that other accents were creeping in?

Soon it hit me. People were speaking Berlin dialect--Berlinerisch. (Yes, yes, I hear you proud regional speakers, "it's a language, not a dialect.")

Thus to a Hugendubel bookstore we marched, in search of both a guide to Berlin and a guide to its dialect.

In Hugendubel, we made our way up to the third floor, where both guidebooks and language books could be found. Stefan went off in search of a WC when a salesperson honed in on me.

"Blah are blah looking blah?" she asked auf Deutsch.

"Umm..." I wasn't confident enough with my German to engage in a conversation with someone I was sure I wouldn't understand, so I said "I'm just looking."

"What blah blah blah looking?" she persisted.

"Umm...Are there books on the dialect of Berlin?" I ventured.

"No. Any books blah Berlin blah in the Berlin section," she said, pointing to the left.

I continued to scan the books on languages. When Stefan returned from the WC, she tried again.

"What book are you looking for?"

Stefan replied that we were looking for a good guidebook to Berlin.

"Berlin guidebooks are over here," she said, pointing again to the section she had already pointed to. "What kind of guidebook do you want?"

"Umm," we said.

"What do you want to do in Berlin?" she prompted. "How long will you be here?"

"Four days; not the typical touristy stuff,"

She handed us her favorite guidebook, then decided if we were only staying for four days, a cheaper one would do. "But really, the best way to see Berlin is with an evening boat tour on the Spree. Good. Do you need any other books?"

"Do you have a book on Berlinerisch?" Stefan asked.

"No. We Do Not Have Any. It would be in the section on Berlin, but We Do Not Have Any."

The next day, Stefan headed to the Technical University to give a talk, Elias went to visit friends for a sleepover, and I went for a long walk with our niece Hanna, who is a horse vet in Berlin. After our walk, she took me to another bookstore, Dussmann, so I could continue the quest for a Berlinerisch book. I had to swoon first over the music scores section, but €120 later, we focused on our primary goal.

The employee we approached at the checkout desk on the first floor at Dussmann was more typical of the German service industry than the employee at Hugendubel. She looked at us, raised an eyebrow, and said "Was." (She probably meant "Was?," but the question mark was too heavy to lift.)

Hanna said auf Deutsch, "My aunt is looking for a book on Berliner--"

"Berlin section. Over there," the woman said, pointing.

"No, not on Berlin, on Berlinerisch," said Hanna.

"Berlin section," she said again, waving us away. "Over there."

We looked in the Berlin section but found only guidebooks, joke books, city maps, souvenir card games, and an umbrella with a map of Berlin printed on the inside.

I felt like I was disobeying the rules when I suggested we go up to the fourth floor to browse the language books. Hanna agreed, but on the escalator she told me that if we couldn't find a book, I'd have to buy the Deutsch/Berlinerisch concentration game to play at dinner.

On the fourth floor, we struck gold. There were dialect books galore: books on Bayerisch, Hessisch, Ruhrdeutsch, Plattdüütsch, Hamburgisch, Wienerisch, Fränkisch, Kölsch, Sächsisch, Schwäbisch, and...wait...what? No Berlinerisch?

No Berlinerisch.

We inquired at an info counter.

"My aunt is looking for a book on Berlinerisch," said Hanna auf Deutsch.

"Berlin section, main floor," the woman said.

"No, not on Berlin, on Berlinerisch," said Hanna.

"Everything we have on Berlin is in the Berlin section."

I jumped in. "Even Berlinerisch? You have Bayerisch, Hessisch, Hamburgisch up here--every other German dialect is in the languages section. Shouldn't Berlinerisch be there too?"

"No. Everything we have on Berlin is in the Berlin section."

Hanna said, "We checked the Berlin section and couldn't find anything."

"If we have it, it's in the Berlin section."

I asked, "Could you, how does one say, 'look it up on the computer'?"

"Oh! Certainly!" She looked on the computer, found two titles, showed us photos of them, and observed they were in stock. Downstairs. In the Berlin section. "Look near the window. Berlin humor is usually near the window."

We headed back downstairs where, at last, we found what we were looking for: Berlinerisch--das Deutsch der Hauptstadt.

Now I understand that in Berlinerisch,

pf -> pp (Apfel -> Appel)
endings -> +e (Bank -> Banke)
ch -> ck (ich -> ick/icke)
k -> ch (Markt -> Marcht)
e -> ö (elf -> ölwe)
i -> ö/ü (Kirche -> Kürsche)
ä -> ee (sägen -> seejen)

The list goes on and on: r tends to get dropped, g tends to be replaced with j and assorted other mutilations, rst turns into hscht, assorted hard sounds become soft and soft sounds become hard.

On top of that, contractions abound. Elias and I couldn't make sense of schwömmnknstje until Stefan explained it as "Schwimmen kannst du, ja?" ("You can swim, right?")

And then there are case shifts. What should be accusative (e.g. mich/dich) becomes dative (e.g. mir/dir), as in ick liebe dir. An example of convenient simplification, or a betrayal of the obsessive precision of German grammar?

In sum, Berlinerisch does a bunch of things I can't catch as they fly by sounding like gibberish. So much to learn and so little time. I guess we'll just have to go back to Berlin.