Were there notable linguistic differences between East and West Germany?

by ADF01FALKEN

I've heard before that there are some differences in language between the two Koreas. I was wondering if this was the case between the two Germanys during the Cold War, as well.

Imperial_Affectation

While Germany does have some variety in its dialects, that variety has precious little to do with the recent political division of the state. Rather, the country is roughly divided into horizontal thirds, representing Low German, Middle German, and High German, respectively. You can make the case that these dialects are further sub-divided (usually into eastern and western halves).

While the division may have had some impact on local dialects, the cultural differences caused by the division are much more readily apparent. You can read a brief summary article of that here (in German).

gypsiehunter

As a non-historian german: No. There are the usual dialects but those are like everywhere dependent on the location in general and not caused by the political division. We sometimes speak of an "Ossie-Akzent" ("Ossie" short for someone from the former DDR), but this dialect was the same before and after the DDR.

Subs-man

There's been a few similar questions asked here in the past that you might be interested in:

Since both of those questions are over 6 months old, If any of the answerer's comment in those threads interest you, feel free to tag their username with your follow-up question in this thread .

Hopefully this helps :)