Sooo I’m from Bern (Bernese Oberland) and I frequently talk to people who moved here from abroad, and a lot of them struggle with Bärndütsch (or Swiss German in general). They are often in the process of learning German, but they still feel excluded from everyday conversations; and when they try to learn Swiss German, the response they often get is “Learn German first, and then Swiss German will come”. I generally agree with that, but that leaves people excluded from everyday conversations frequently and makes integration here harder for them. So I tried to make a webapp where you can learn Bärndütsch just from English:
The whole thing is still a work in progress, but so far I made 36 lessons and I plan to keep adding more of them whenever I have time All of it is completely free and I intend to keep it that way (if you’d like to support, you can buy me a coffee on there, but that is absolutely voluntary and not expected)
It’s a pretty simple app with a few lesson types, that works a bit like Busuu or Duolingo. You can use it as a guest by clicking the button below the login without an account! The account is just there for tracking progress and giving recommendations for which lessons to repeat, as well as just getting overall repetition lessons.
A few disclaimers: There are no official writing or vocabulary conventions, so this is based on how I and my friends speak; some old-school Bern folks might disagree with some of the things in there haha. Also I’m no language teacher, I try to explain everything in as much detail and clearly as possible, but I might still make mistakes or not organize and structure it as clearly. Please be lenient with me there!
If you find any bugs, errors or have comments, please let me know! Thanks
this, learning Swiss German is as useful as learning Elbonian, you can turn up anywhere in Swiss German speaking part speak loudly Elbonian insisting it’s your Swiss German from generations and complain about the local variant
PS. @gewoi since you don’t know how to write it, how about writing it in a standard way https://www.ipachart.com/ Interestingly, toIPA.org have even speach-to-text tool, so give it a try (you can find many other german to ipa free conversion sites, just ask ai)
I hear you, I put the “guest” option at the top, I’ve heard that from other people too! The login is just to track progress and for the app to give repetition lessons; most of the functionality is there without a login. I used my database provider for authentication, and from them, I put the google option there for people that don’t want to make a new account just for this site, but it’s not a requirement at all
Hi there, sorry to hear that you don’t like the idea! My intention wasn’t to teach people all of Swiss German, but rather to give them a tool to hopefully make it easier to understand it, specifically Bärndütsch. The writing is more of a tool than anything else, as I explain in the first lesson, and it’s more about hearing what people say and what it means; I mostly follow berndeutsch.ch in their writing conventions (with some small modifications, like -y vs -i vs -ii).
As a native speaker, I find that once you understand one dialect, the other ones are quite easy to understand too; the differences can be large but not emough for this tool to not help in my opinion! If you have any specific thing you would like to see differently on here, please let me know, I’m glad to make some changes to make it more helpful
Keep it going, for sure someone out there will be glad to use it.
PS. I remember learning from Pimsleur audio course. It’s perfect for learning during commute because all you have to do is just listen. Since Swiss German is only a spoken language you could actually mimic that course style: create mini dialogs about certain topics, explaining a bit the simple sentences. It’s perhaps best to listen to a sample module to get an idea (I’m not sure if the free lesson here is a good example) Learn to Speak Conversational German with Our App | Pimsleur® Perhaps some “samples” (ekhm, copies) can be easily googled out.
I’ve tried listening to Coffee break German once, but this podcast detours too much into English and lengthy grammar explanations. When you learn a language you just want to get the minimal hints to understand what was being said and why, and enjoy the foreign language comprehension bit by bit
All of it is completely free and I intend to keep it that way (if you’d like to support, you can buy me a coffee on there, but that is absolutely voluntary and not expected) 
(you can find many other german to ipa free conversion sites, just ask ai)