[As someone from Stuttgart, did you ever speak the Swabian dialect?] In a terribly strong fashion. [How did you get rid of it?] Only with a lot of difficulties. The Swabian as such is generally taciturn and if he is required to speak standard German, to him it's as if he has to learn a new language. All of a sudden he is supposed to pronounce the endings of words. This scares him and so he withdraws into mumbling. It was a long way until I even dared to speak standard German.
