I recently moved to Switzerland (Zofingen / Luzern) and realized it's pretty hard to survive here without Swiss German if you want to hang out with locals a lot (of course basic high german and even english are enough for buying groceries and asking for directions ...)
Does anyone here struggle to learn it or everyone gave up? What resources do you use besides the famous red Hoi book? Are there any courses that combine learning high German and Swiss german?
P.S. This meme reflects my impression of Swiss German so far:
Do not give up. There are many, many old-timers on here who are going to chime in and tell you that they are just fine sticking with English for 10-15-20 years, yadda, yadda, yadda.
That's crap. It is worth whatever it takes to learn the language. I have been going to French class for SEVEN YEARS now and it has been worth every single franc and every single minute. Do you know why? Because I am actually living my life here. I understand everything and I can make myself understood.
Do not give up. You can do it. If I can do it at age 53, anybody can.
Swiss German is not a language as such iirc, but more a dialect which varies from region to region in the German speaking parts of the country. So the Swiss German you learn in Luzern may not help you much in Bern or Zurich which will have their own versions. Best to learn High German and then start applying that to what you hear in Swiss German.
Nah. It's not a language in its own right, technically, but it's a language that differs considerably from High German, in grammar and in vocabulary. There's a reason Germans don't understand Swiss German (save for those living close to the border), let alone speak it. Swiss German is, however, only a spoken language, not a written one, though a colloquial written form does exist too.
Of course people from Luzern understand those from Zurich and those from Bern understand people from Basel. There are some words that are different, but these are just regional variations, nothing really major in that it would be impossible to understand each other. So whether someone were to pick up a Zürcher or a Basler dialect wouldn't matter at all.
That being said, Swiss German is close to impossible to learn except for a few random words, so I'd stick with High German. Official correspondence will be in High German anyway, and any Swiss German speaker will understand High German and can technically respond in High German too (whether they want to is a different question).
I work only with non-Swiss; most have lived here for 10+ years and at best speak some High German (most for some reason refuse to learn it altogether, which I find a bit irritating). I have never heard any 'foreigner' speak Swiss German. However, there are indeed classes for Schweizerdeutsch, e.g. here: http://www.klubschule.ch/Kurse/suche@schweizerdeutsch
They'd get told off at school. Now call it dialect. That's Swiss German to me. Does anyone with good English go to some chav home counties town and be expected to speak local dialect? Would there be courses in it? If I went to Newcastle to live would I be expected to why aye it up all the time? What if I went to Glasgow and wanted to speak Scots-English? I'd probably get seriously hurt pretty quickly.
In the UK we have regional differences in what some things are called, so in Switzerland learning to say velo instead of fahrrad is fine but I don't see the need to learn to speak like a country bumpkin who hasn't seen anyone but their own family in four generations.
thanks for replies! I kind of expected these kind of replies, mostly because learning Swiss German is such a hassle because of the lack of textbooks / online resources that exist for other languages (e.g. standard German, French, etc.). I am also looking for all kind of excuses not to learn it.
But let's not deny some basic facts:
- learning almost any Swiss dialect allows you to speak freely with most Swiss German speakers. Otherwise people from Bern, Luzern and Zurich would speak high German with each other instead of Swiss german. But they speak Swiss German and perfectly understand each other.
- I don't think you should compare Swiss dialects to English dialects. In English-speaking world, standard language is usually more prestigious than the dialect; in Switzerland, dialect is more prestigious than the standard German. Swiss people hate speaking German, which I realized after being here for a few months. This strip perfectly reflects it:
- Most Swiss don't study in high school - so an average person here had only 4 years of English. That's not enough to be fluent in it. Whenever I was at home parties / social gatherings with 5+ swiss, there was always at least one person who had a difficulty having intellectual discussions in English (or even playing games in English). Also, at big gatherings with only 1-2 foreigners, people make an effort to speak English/German at first, but can't help switching to Swiss German every 5 minutes (especially when someone wants to tell a joke that's "untranslatable" into English, and then everyone laughs, and I stand there with a stupid look on my face).
I am not persuading anyone to learn Swiss German. If you hang out with expats only or with a few Swiss friends who are fluent in English, it's probably is a waste of time to learn it. But I want to really experience local life, and in that case there's no way to survive without the language.
I'd say there would be a difference between a Swiss born in Luzern, who, more or less from birth heard other Swiss German dialects, and an alien who learned one specific dialect without much contact to other regions. I must say this makes me ask myself what I have been speaking for the last forty years! Swiss German speakers seem to understand me perfectly well when I rattle on and it certainly isn't High German I'm speaking.
In my village, and in most of the places I frequent, one must speak German. English is simply non existent, probably more for political/philosophical reasons rather than unfamiliarity with the language. Official communication, doctor visits, dealing with tradesman, shopping, any social gathering, neighborhood pleasantries - all German only.
However, Standard German will work, although the person you speak to most likely sticks with Dialekt.
This is the solution most Auslanders like me adopt: Put your efforts into reaching a decent level of functional (and hopefully beyond) Standard German. Along the way you will naturally start to understand enough Dialekt to conduct your daily life.
As long as you understand Dialekt, as long as you do not ask those you interact with to switch from Dialekt, you are doing what your neighbors expect of you. You are not required to speak Dialekt, in fact a foreigner speaking poor Dialekt has committed a greater sin than one who sticks to Standard German. Conversations where one party speaks Dialekt and the other Standard German are quite common.
Thank you, this sounds helpful and promising! I do spend time with Swiss from different areas (Luzern, Bern and Aargau, mostly), so i hope eventually I will also learn to understand different accents.
How much time did it take you to start speaking Swiss German on an intermediate level? Did you do anything specific to learn it, or it just happened naturally after some time?
Thank you, this sounds like a good solution. I am learning both high German and Swiss German at the same time, but my German is advancing much faster than my Swiss German simply because there are more resources to learn it.
Quite honestly I haven't a clue. My situation was different from that of Meloncollie in that from the start I worked with a mixture of nationalities few of whom understood High German, with elderly folk who reacted better to Swiss dialect and with smallish children who simply didn't understand High German anyway. I think I spoke High German in more 'official' surroundings though.
Sorry I cannot help further. It was all just too long ago.
Swiss German is for historical reasons pretty much unique. Because of the confederated nature of the country, each canton refused to accept any other cantonal dialect as the Swiss standard, let alone High German - last time this was attempted was, I believe, in the 1920's where St Gallen German was proposed as a national standard - needless to say this went down like a lead balloon in much of the country.
Apparently another factor is the Bible. Dutch, a German dialect, broke from the others and became standardized, in part, thanks to the Dutch publishing a bible in the language, effectively standardizing it in the process. The Swiss didn't and just used Bibles from Germany.
Practical concerns gave the rise to Swiss Standard German (a Swiss variation on High German) for formal written communication. But the dialects remain the spoken languages; Switzerland is unique where it comes to this anomaly, outside Asia.
As the expression goes, a language is a dialect with a military , that is a language is imposed through force (even if that force is simply standardized curriculua). This ultimately never happened here.
I think meloncollie gave the best advice on learning Swiss German; get to a compliant level of High German and learn to at least understand Swiss German. You'll probably adopt a lot of Swiss German when speaking too - hear an expression enough times and you'll end up using it.
I am in Switzerland for 3 and a half years and did some face to face classes when i first arrived, i did not have time as was busy with work and all the relocation stuff so put it on the back burner.
I restarted online classes last week,High German,more out of future planning if i need to ever look for another job rather than any immediete need to speak German.
I work from home when in Switzerland and when i need to do real work i am travelling outside of Switzerland so all my work is done through English.These online classes work for me as i can cancel and reschedule at short notice due to my fluid work schedule.
Never really felt the need to learn from a social aspect as English gets you by and I also speak some Dutch so i can understand most written things with a struggle. Socializing with the Swiss excites me just about as much as watching paint dry so from that perspective not a real reason to learn Swiss German.
I am not bothered about the learning perspective of Swiss German as i see this as a similar impediment between Flemish and Dutch which i overcame before.
In any event once you have High German that is all that is required for work if i ever decide to change jobs.
I know a couple of adults who rose to the challenge and speak Swiss German with almost none discernible trace of their first language. It is apparently an act of will combined with talent.
One of them - a German - is a musician and probably has a good ear. He speaks the bernese dialect perfectly.
Another one is an American, married a Swiss and is raising a family here, she picked it up while raising her children here, just imitated them.
Another one is a Scot and does really fine. A Swiss wo went to Scotland to work there told me that he felt that Scots was eerily similar to Swiss German and he picked it up fast.
Some of my German friends just color their language with many dialect bits and pieces, sometimes a cute hodge-podge of different dialects spoken by colleagues at their workplace. I like that :-)
P.S. I don't yet have the green Thank You button, so I have to spam this thread with additional posts to thank for the posts I like Sorry for that everyone!
Hmmm... This is something I cannot understand. I lived in many countries throughout my life (Laos, U.S., Spain etc) and I always was eager to communicate with the local people. What is wrong with the Swiss?
Communicating is not a problem,i even take part in some social ativities in my town such as football and a ski group. I lived and worked in a lot of other countries also but just do not expect do make close friendship with the real Swiss. The are nice and civilized professionally and to a certain degree socially but letting an Auslander into their innersocial circle..Never
Mascha: Since you speak slavic language who has - maybe with exception of the "H" sound - all the sounds of German and some more (I am no real expert, but have been to Russia and love the sound of the language) you might be fast at picking it up.
Being a teacher, I had some russian parents who spoke swiss german really well with almost no trace of accent.You might be a real talent :-)
Interesting... I already heard this opinion from a couple of foreigners (one of them, a Russian, claimed that Swiss don't let anyone into their inner circle EXCEPT for Americans )
Maybe my situation is very different because when I came to Switzerland, I was dating a Swiss. I was immediately accepted into the circle - I was even a bit shocked at how nice, open and sincere people were with me.
Maybe some day I will start a thread about Swiss mentality / openness to foreigners. It would be interesting to compare experience.
This sounds very optimistic Thank you again!
It is true that Russian has similar consonants with Swiss German, but not vowels, unfortunately. In Russian, there are no short and long vowels like in English, German and Swiss German. E.g. for Russians who didn't study English phonetics, beach and bitch sound the same .
The good thing is that Swiss German sounds more melodic and relaxed than high German to a Russian ear .
But Russian has a lot of sounding and not sounding consonants, which I found quite difficult to pronounce correctly.
Yes, the swiss singsong is something I prefer to the rather flat sounding northern High German. Maybe it is in correlation to mountains and flatlands :-)
Wish you luck in aquiring the prefect sounds - another Mascha.