I like(d) how old people, like my late grandmother and -father, (born in 1925 and 1926, died 2007 and 2013) even had different dialect words that many people don’t use anymore these days.
Maybe some still do here out West (in rural western Austria), but in Vienna for example, the local Vienna dialect is slowly dying out, because the young people speak even Standard German these days (like actual Germans !).
And some new-style mashup of „foreign-German“ mixed with Viennese (the city has like 55% migrant background) and elementary schools are often 80%+ with children of migrant backgrounds.
Anyway, my grandparents from the mom side (above) didn’t like to talk about the 2nd WW because my granddad usually started to cry when asked about it, so nobody did (incl. me, even though I was interested in the topic when they were still living and during my high school years). My grandpa was drafted into the Hitler Army at age 17 and was transported to the French front for the following 2-3 years to serve as cannon fodder, coming from a poor, isolated mountain farmer background. I always held my granddad in highest regards because of this traumatic experience and for raising his family properly after returning from the battlefield, despite everything being completely destroyed here.
My granddad + grandmother from my dad side were even older, born in the 1910s already - but already died before my birth in 1987. So, never met them, but they were also poor mountain farmers.
