Home > Swiss German language

Unlike most dialects in modern Europe, Swiss German is the spoken everyday language of all social levels in industrial cities as well as in the countryside. Using dialect conveys no social or educational inferiority. There are specific settings where speaking Standard German is demanded or polite, e.g. in school classes (but not during breaks), in parliament, in TV news, in the presence of German-speaking foreigners, but outside of such settings two Swiss do not speak Standard German with each other.

The Swiss dialects do have marked regional differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, but are mutually understandable - with a few exceptions from mountain regions, e.g., in the German part of Valais or in the bilingual city of Fribourg. Swiss dialects are an essential part of the local cultural identity, which goes in some places down to the local village or cultural subgroup level (the upper class of Basel has their special dialect as well as the farmers of Adelboden). In some regions a politician who does not speak the local idiom has lower chances in elections.

Swiss German dialects are a spoken language. All formal writing, newspapers, books and much of informal writing is done in Standard German, which is usually called Schriftdeutsch (written German). Some Swiss authors (e.g. Jeremias Gotthelf) and newspapers do insert dialect terms in their texts which are acceptable use.

There exist relatively few written works in Swiss dialects, but today especially young people use the dialect more and more in informal written communication (e.g. email). There are no official rules about writing Swiss German - spelling is mainly up to the individual.

It expresses strong regional, cantonal and national Swiss separateness, setting Swiss residents apart from those living in "the big canton" (Germany).

Swiss German is intelligible to speakers of other Alemannic dialects, but -- unlike Austrian German -- usually not intelligible to speakers of Standard German (which includes French- or Italian-speaking Swiss who learn Standard German at school). Swiss German speakers on TV or in movies are thus usually dubbed or subtitled if shown in Germany.

1 History

Unlike most German dialects, most Swiss dialects did not participate in the second German vowel shift during medieval times - they use mostly the same vowels as Middle High GermanMiddle High German is an ancestor of the modern German language, and was spoken from 1050 to about 1500. Some linguists prefer to use 1350 as the end of the Middle High German period, calling the period from 1350 to 1750 Early New High German. Dialectical. As such, even though Swiss German linguistically is a High German language, its pronunciation is in places closer to Low German or DutchDutch is a West Germanic language spoken worldwide by around 21 million people. The variety of Dutch spoken in Belgium is also informally called Flemish . The Dutch name for the language is Nederlands or less formal Hollands and Dutch is sometimes called than other High German dialects or standard German.

Example with SAMPA pronunciation: The Standard German Haus (haus) is in Swiss Dialects still Hus (hus) while some dialects in Central Switzerland retain the even older form Huis (huis)

Examples (in SAMPAThe Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA is a computer-readable phonetic script using 7-bit printable ASCII characters, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It was originally developed in the late 1980s for six European langua):