Even Kim Cattrall, of Sex and the City fame, speaks German! Here she speaks a few perfect German sentences in which she claims she's forgotten a lot and excuses her German...totally unnecessary, in my opinion.

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As a follow-up to yesterday's post Wer sind die Schwaben?, here's a wonderful little song, completely in Swabian and entrenched in the Swabian culture.

A few helps for understanding what they're singing:

-Swabians are really frugal, so frugal in fact, that they drop the final 'n' on a lot of words. Thus "Schwabenland" becomes "Schwabeland." "Mein" becomes "Mei." An exception to this is verbs and the final 'n' becomes a 't,' thus "sparen" (to save) becomes "sparet."

-"Wir" is pronounced as "mir" so "Mir sparet unser Geld" translates into German as "Wir sparen unser Geld."

-"St" at the beginning of a word in German is pronounced as "sht" or "scht." Swabians use this rule for any "st" anywhere in any word at all times. So "Du bist" becomes "Du bisch." "Das ist" becomes "Das isch."

-The official motto of Baden-Württemberg is "Wir können alles, außer Hochdeutsch." We can do anything, except speak high German. It's true. Just trust me.

auf Englisch:  Who are the Swabians?

The Swabians are the people of Württemberg, which is part of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. (The folk of the area of Baden are Badisch and their dialect is different.) Each area of Germany has its own characteristics and peculiarities, however since I spent a lot of time there, it's worth spending a bit of time getting to know these hard-working folk. They do not speak what you normally know of as "high German*," but they speak Swabian. It's a dialect far enough removed from Hochdeutsch that many Germans can't understand it.

Swabian is the English translation of "Schwaben." Die Schwaben. A few of their specialties are as follows:

1. Schaffen

Schaffen typically means something is being created, executed, or handled. Not to the Swabians. Schaffen means to work. And work they do. They have a phrase Schaffe, schaffe, Häusle baue:  Work, work, build a house. And that's exactly what they do. They are not stereotypically but in reality a very hard-working people and they have a strong infrastructure and stable economy in Baden-Württemberg.

Deutsch Perfekt is having a special contest for new subscribers to Deutsch Perfekt. When you order a subscription between now and February 28th, you have a chance to win 100 issues of Deutsch Perfekt! That's one copy of every issue they've printed thus far.

(And it's awesome, trust me--I have all 100 myself!)

You also have two options for receiving the magazine, either as a printed copy or as an e-paper and the e-paper costs a bit less than the printed copy.

Click here to read the details in German and to order your subscription! Remember, this offer expires February 28, 2014!

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Even Leonardo Dicaprio speaks German, which is helpful since his Grandma was from Nordrhein-Westfalen.

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The Matterhorn is one of the most famous mountain peaks and it lies in southern Switzerland. Here a Swiss filmmaker has filmed it in timelapse and created a serene, peaceful short film that is sure to take your breath away:

the Peak from Christian Mülhauser on Vimeo.