06:15

Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Aldrans

2008-06-16

Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

1930

When you wear an apron? The corner of the apron is called a Zipfel! The maid played with the corner of the apron while praying. We always used to wear aprons. That's what we say in dialect. For example, who understands the word Schnarrfer? You don’t understand that either? That’s a backpack, the backpack! You get it? You wear it on your back. Or for example the cart that’s standing outside there, there, next to the silo, can you see it? Just with different wheels, we used to call that a Graie. It's a two-wheeled cart that you pull. It wasn’t to be pulled by animals. It was for small errands. "Grab the Graie, take the Schnarrfer and the Gscholder with you!" Gscholder, that’s a jacket. Imagine what a difference there was! It's only 25 kilometres from Aldrans to Weer, and they spoke completely differently. There they couldn’t understand certain things. That’s what it was like with the dialect. It’s not so strong anymore these days. but that’s how strong the dialect was. When it was about to rain, or a storm was threatening, for example, you used to say: "Take your Gscholder with you, in case it rains." We used to say. In Weer they used to say Jancker, that was already easier to understand, Jancker. And it is like that in every valley, you get a different dialect everywhere. Much of it is getting lost these days, because people have a lot more contact with other people - through tourism. And also in the towns and workplaces you don’t speak such a strong dialect anymore. That’s what it was like. Can you think of other expressions we don’t know? Yes, Gscholder, Jancker, Krattn, Graie. How do you say it - Krattn (wheelbarrow) and Graie. Maybe I can think of more later. See, it already made a difference, the distance of 25 km already made a difference in language, made a difference in dialect. For example, in the Zillertal (Ziller valley), I had an aunt there, my father’s sister. If you had to go to the toilet - the word toilet was not used that much in the country - they used to say: "Do you need to go to the Lavi, before you leave?" That was the john. It was called Lavi; because sometimes I went to see my aunt over there, she always used to say: "Before you leave, go to the Lavi quickly." In dialect there were all kinds of expressions. A lot got lost because of tourism. And anyway, in our area, the dialect probably wasn’t even as pronounced as it was in the valleys or further up the mountains. Like when you went to see the neighbour to have a chat, you used to say: "Are you going to Hoangascht?" Do you know that one? You used to say to Hoangascht. I'd say: "I' m now going to Hoangascht a little." It's a kind of expression. I remembered it just now. Well, this is old stuff. It’s different today. These days village life is completely different anyway, everything has changed. Back then, there were many communities solely for farming. You didn’t have a lot of other people in the villages then. These days everywhere, especially up in Aldrans, which you can call a suburb of Innsbruck - it’s only 5 or 6 km - the dialect gets lost, diluted. So that dialect isn't understood that well at all anymore. And also the farms, they practically... The smaller ones died out, and mostly only the larger ones survive. It’s like that here too.