Can this be put in English properly? Well, let’s give it a try:
I agree, that comic books are no high culture. But they are culture. Somehow. Comic books are art. And there is made a kind of cult around some comic books.
Language is obviously part of our culture, especially dialects, that seem to vanish and die. Now it’s an interesting thing to see some dialect merge with some… well… ‘cult comic book’…
I haven’t read the “Lustiges Taschenbuch” (don’t know – is there a version in the UK or U.S.?) for many years. I’ve been standing in front of those books again and again and smiled over many an issue, but I never bought one since the early 1990s. And then I saw one special issue in the dialect of Berlin and couldn’t help but buy it.
The story…
…does not need to be told here. Donald Duck’s anoying nephews are saving the days, Mickey Mouse has got more luck than wits and Donald himself is finally saving the world as a secret agent. Nothing we haven’t read yet. But I haven’t expected a Shakespearian classic.
No, it’s been the language used in that issue.
Imagine You would read “Star Wars” in Scottish. Or Mickey Mouse & Co. would speak Cockney. I guess that Cockney thing is showing better, what I mean. It’s a funny thing to read story You (seem to) know in a strange and nearly unreadable but yet familiar language.
I have to admit, that I had to read to one or the other line twice. Even grown up in Berlin with it’s dialect it is one thing to speak the Berlin language and a different thing to read it. But exactly this is the point. This is why I want to recommend that little piece of trivial literature to those interested in dialects. If need be even the issue in the Munich dialect. If need be…