Lingotopia

There is one language, that I learn by total immersion, but will never speak: Swabian. Swabian is a German dialect, but it's quite unintelligible with Northern variants of German and the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg (located in the South-West of Germany) prides itself with the slogan: "Wir können alles außer Hochdeutsch" (We can do everything except speaking High German). I live deep in the Swabian country (aka Ländle) and my rough estimate is that 90% of my colleagues speak Swabian. I'm South German, but from another southern region and there are many expressions and also traditions, that I didn't know, before moving here. Today I learned about a maypole tradition, that I didn't know. Surely, I knew about maypoles in general. It's a tradition, especially prevalent in Bavaria, Swabia and the Rhineland. Every village decorates a huge tree (there are competitions for the most beautiful maypoles) and sets its up, right before the beginning of the m...