Language

The Swiss don't speak German and who ever told you that is a lying bastard.

Switzerland is a multilingual country, with four official languages, French, German*, Italian and Romansh - though to be fair less then 1% of the population speak Romansh.

*Except they don't speak German. Oh they can, they just don't. They speak Swiss-German, which is like the difference between an standard issue Army knife, and a Swiss-Army knife.

These languages aren't evenly spread throughout the country however, but are instead localized near the boarders of the four countries that border Switzerland. (Ok, so its five countries, but as mentioned earlier, Liechtenstein doesn't really count.) So to the west is France, and in the western parts of the Switzerland they all speak French, the roadsigns are all in French and the advertising is all in French. To the south is Italy, and in the southern parts they all speak Italian, with roadsigns and advertising also in Italian. (Oh, and just as a warning, the transition from one language to another while travelling though the country is pretty abrupt.)

Now, to the North and East are Germany and Austria (and Liechtenstein!), which German are speaking countries, so it would make sense that to the North-East of Switzerland they would all speak German, right? Wrong. Oh, all the roadsigns and advertising are in German, the television and Radio is in German, the movies are in German, but the important thing here is, these Swiss don't actually speak German. The speak Swiss-German.

So what is Swiss-German? Well Wikipedia describes it as any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland, or a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family. Others have less politely described it not so much as a language in itself but more as a throat disease. Essentially Swiss-German is a heavily accented dialect of standard German which only superficially resembles German, at least from a tourists point of view.

I'm told that once I've learnt German, Swiss-German will be easy, its just a matter of shifting some vowels around, dropping some syllables and clearing my throat more frequently. I remain skeptical however. Some of the Germans that I've met have confessed they can't understand their Swiss neighbors, and Swiss-German speakers on TV or in movies are usually dubbed or subtitled if shown in Germany.

So why don't I just learn Swiss-German? Well for one Swiss-German is not a written language. In the 600 or so years the Switzerland has been around they've never bothered to write anything down. Well ok, thats not entirely true, they use standard German when writting, but for speaking is all Swiss-German. So at home children learn to speak Swiss-German, and then at school they learn to read and write in German. This seems to work fine for them, for me its a nightmare.

I've been learning German here for about six weeks now, and had taught myself a little back in NZ. I've gotten to the point where I can understand and reply to fairly simple German phrases, enough to get by day to day, if I was in Germany. The problem is everyone around me is speaking that unintelligible Swiss-German. Luckily, while I might not be able to understand a word they are saying, they can usually understand my halting, mangled German. But then instead of replying in German, they can usually tell they I actually speak English, so switch to that for my benefit. It turns out the fifth language of Switzerland is English, they just don't tend to advertise it.

Click to enlarge.