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Comment by eahm | Hacker News Reader

Oh geez, for example in Italian to say here you say "qui", where I grew up I say "mchi" but my brothers say "mqui" or "mque", where I used to go to school they say "meque" with the weirdest sound.

To say what are you doing in Italian is "cosa fai" but I say "co fei" and my brothers "sa fei" and where I used to go to school they say "che fe".

These are just simple simple things but almost everything changes here and there and I can't put the sound with the words here, they actually sound different, and change where the actual accents are.

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I have relatives in Bari so I've been fascinated by Barese. My Italian is not good but I can passively pick it up when listening or watching television, but Barese sounds 100% like a completely different language to me. French and Spanish are more intelligible.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gEKxf8RD-OM

Funny also I moved to USA ~20 years ago and you lose the Italian, you don't remember words etc. but you'll never lose your dialect, it just comes natural because that's how you grew up instead of what you learned growing up and from school, Tuscan people have it easier because the language comes from their dialect, Dante etc.

And to add, I wouldn't click that link if you paid me lol, I hate the Barese... ok I clicked, funny stuff.

you are making the mistake of confusing your experience, which is of course legit but anecdata, with "how it works" in general.

I'm an almost 50 years old Italian so not a spring chicken but I definitely learnt Italian growing up, not a dialect, and not "from school".

I guess it's the difference between growing up in a city vs a village.

Well yeah, GP's comment obviously only applies in the case that your native language is not standard Italian.

not obvious at all when every sentence uses "you" to indicate a general rule that applies to every Italian rather than "I" to indicate a personal experience

Hah, Barese sounds like a Frenchman is trying to speak Italian but can't be bothered.

I grew up in southern Switzerland and the dialect situation is the same as you describe.

Not necessarily every town retained their distinctive dialect in practice because people move, not all parents pass the dialect down to their kids etc.

But I remember a friend of mine lived in this village of 40 inhabitants where they said "e peu que?" instead of italian "e poi cosa?"

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