Can anyone tell me, is this narrated in Swiss German? A lady in Germany was just speaking on it and I thought her German sounded kind of different to the narrator's, or was I imagining it?!
I have got "wildlife nannies" on channel 2 on the tv at the hotel room while I get ready
its all dialect.
Pick it ... good question - I think only with time. there are nuances but too confusing for you at this stage to describe. it is all about the ch, ae, umlüt, etc.
love the swiss - if they want to understand you when you 'speak' they will. if they dont then it is not even worth the effort.
just go for it and stay positive
If someone sounds like she could bayonet puppies without turning a hair, she's speaking High German.
If someone sounds like a garden gnome with a bad case of bronchitis, he's speaking Swiss German.
They're quite easy to tell apart once you get used to them...
wow - so sorry - did I hit a nerve
just saying - but certainly not prepared to get into an argument about the differences of their dialects.
if you want to - tell me your experience and i will gladly swap
the differences between German and Swiss German are much more than nuanced, and you will pretty quickly begin to recognize which is which (long before you actually understand what is being said). the differences between Swiss German dialects will take longer to decipher, as will the differences between the various regional German accents.
You're the one who sounds a bit nervy, to be honest. DB's explanation is pretty accurate.
The problem is that, like English, German has dialects that differ as much as Geordie does from Cockney, plus there is "proper German" just as there is "proper English". Then there is Swiss German, which can differ so much that even the Swiss don't quite understand each other, the classic example being the Swiss German spoken in Kanton Wallis. I have to really concentrate to understand them.
Proper German sounds clipped and the vowels are "brighter", the "ch" is more of a "sh" sound with only a slight rasp. Swiss German as spoken in Zurich has "darker" vowels and the "ch" is more like in the Scottish Loch but with extra phlegm. The difference is revealed when the respective nationals speak English: Germans sound like you remember from the WWII films of yonder, very sharp. Swiss people speaking English invariably sound like slightly mad professors about the take over the world for some benign, OCD reason. Bit of a singsong going on.
And then there is Austrian German...
In the Swiss Watching book they describe Swiss German as like a Swedish person, with a chest infection, speaking High german.
It's more phlemy, but also more sing-song. German German sounds very monotone to me now.
If it sounds fairly musical, it's probably dialect. If it sounds a little harsher and more staccato, it's likely high German. You really have to be able to understand it a bit and at least have heard both versions (in more than a few accents/dialects) to pick it up properly.
Auslady, sorry, don't know what you're on about "touching a nerve" and starting arguments . Standard German and dialect are pretty much different from each other in both pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.
The Narration was in German German.
The Gibbon was in Eberswalde near Berlin.
The Owl was in Sachsenhagen near Hanover.
I had not the impression that the caretakers had strong accents. The difference was more that the narrator read a script while the others were talking freely.
Ahhh thanks! I am listening to people now at the hotel, some of them sound kind of Welsh? Some sound French-ish as well, and in the restaurant near Rheinfall today I heard the same lady say to her waiter "dankeshen" (sp?) and then "merci" I know those are the German and French words for "thank you" can anyone explain?!
Lady on next table now I just heard her say "ich bin [something] " so it must be one of the variations of German she is speaking but she and (more so) her male companion is making a LOT of Welsh-type sounds (like the "Ll" in Llandudno) is this Swiss German then...?
Yes! The sound of welsh is very similar to the sound of Swiss German.
Yay! Well they are all speaking it here. It does sound musical. Do they use English numbers? Could have sworn I just heard someone say "six thousand", the English words "six" and "thousand" but the rest of the sentence wasn't English. Or perhaps there are words that sound very similar and I misheard?!
German for six thousand is "sechstausend" which sounds like the English. Don't know about the Swiss German though.
Edit.. According to an online phrase book, in Swiss German, six is "sächs/säggs" and thousand is "tuusig".
Ja, six thousand in German is sechstausend, so it's very similar sounding. In Swiss German, it's more like SACHS for six.
And yes, people tend to use Merci (but like MUR-CI instead of the more french pronunciation of MARE-see) and some other french words (poulet instead of Huhn for chicken, Velo instead of Fahrrad for bike).
And then there is sexy 6:00/18:00. We are meeting at 6, wir treffen uns um "sachsy" (Can't write phonetically )
Never heard that in Switzerland except from native English speakers.
The pronunciation of the vocals of "merci" in Swiss German differs very little from French. However, the intonation differs because in French the stress and the pitch of a syllable needn't coincide, whereas in Germanic languages, usually a stressed syllable also has a higher pitch.
Swiss German tends to stress the first syllable of French words (" MARE-ci "), Standard German stresses the last syllable (" mare-SEE "). They are both wrong, but both not entirely. In real French, the rhythm of the sentence is much more important than the stress of a particular word.
what i find real funny is, that swiss make up french words, so i have heard.
for instance "paillard" is not french-french. is that true? plus they speak words differently, eg. the label Garnier.
the high german tv spots shown on swiss tv pronounce it garn-ieeeeeeeeeh.
the swiss say garnnnnnnnnnnnnnn-ie.
thats ok for me, but when i get funny looks when i look for garnier products and i pronounce it like in TV it pisses me off, especially when i hear that they pronounce it not 100% correct french plus some words dont even exist in french-french. plus playing dumb as in cosmectic section of a shop its hard to get what i want though a 1000 peeps pronounce it like i do.
and what i also dont get is why the most french word ever after baguette, the good old croissant gets verbally molested and raped to a gipfeli?
not that they call it that way is what bothers me, but ordering one as a croissant... stare blank.
Are you now talking about the varieties of French spoken in Suisse Romande, like paillard de veau ? Paillard is a somewhat oldfashioned French word for escalope . What's wrong with that? In English it's called cutlet, which is much wronger.
In other words, the TV commercial imitates the Standard German pronunciation. Maybe it was even produced in Germany. Didn't I already cover those differences?
Gosh, I'd like to have your problems. Can we swap? Please?
Gipfeli is just a variant of the German word Kipferl / Kipf / Gipfel . In certain parts of your homeland, it's called Hörnchen . Isn't it better to use an existing German word in German than to import a foreign word? So what exactly is your problem?
Back to the topic please.
My local bakery happily serves me croissants when I ask for croissants. I didn't realise until I read this thread that there was a German word for them.
Well, you get this sort of thing with English too. I remember a commercial a while back for Olay skin cream. There’s the American saying the French say …, the Germans say … and the English call it Ulay. Ah, no we don’t. We call it as it’s spelt Olay! The Americans called it Ulay.
I agree the Swiss have French words that my French translation package and French books have never heard of. Often words ending in …age. Gypserie is another word that doesn’t translate in “proper” French. Something to do with painting and paints I guess as it’s often alongside peinture on business signs.
Paillard is French French though; it means lecherous or bawdy.