> My experiences in Bavaria show me that fairly often a rival dialect
> will be willfully not understood.
That's a social issue, not a communications issue.
The basic assumption of language usage is that both sides are *trying* to communicate.
If one side is snubbing the other over matters of accent and dialect, then the issue isn't really one of dialect, but of people's reactions to use of a particular dialect.
Sort of like being an American tourist in Paris. The Parisians may choose to snub the tourist who speaks accented French, even though they completely understand what the tourist wants, because they don't like the tourist's accent.
An English speaker in Quebec may face similar problems. Even though most of the Quebecois speak at least some English, they may choose to give someone who speaks to them in English (instead of French) a puzzled look and a shrug.
> The situation gets different when Bavarian Svabs and Bavarians proper
> get into contact. It takes a lot of sympathy between the participants
> to let go of their dialects, and sympathies between these different
> groups of population aren't that great. (They might form a common
> linguistic front against northerners, though...)
Sure. They may very well understand each other, too, and just be pretending they don't, as a way to provoke those people with the funny accent.
> You may well get the situation where the chieftains talk extremely
> heavy dialect, their speakers translate it into just accented common
> (urban) Sartarite, and then the speakers of the other party
> translating it into another extremely heavy dialect.
Or at least one step. I've seen that on TV, where a program will subtitle the speech of someone who speaks heavily accented English. Seeing the subtitles, it's easy to understand what they are saying. Without the subtitles, it might be more difficult. Then again, I'm half deaf, so it might be more difficult for me than for others.
Assuming both sides *want* to communicate, dialect isn't automatically a barrier. If one side or the other doesn't particularly want to communicate, dialect can become a convenient excuse.
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