When I still lived in Scotland, I had a german customer on the Phone, whose name was W@nker. I had to send him an email, and decided to inform my manager in advance, before i would get in trouble for being abusive towards a customer.
I only recently discovered that there were two "r's" in the names of the two Appenzell half-cantons Innerrhoden and Ausserrhoden, which previously I had thought to be related to testicles that had somehow been separated in inner and outer portions due to religious differences after the Reformation. I was relieved to learn that the second word is "rhoden" and that it means "clearings".
There are several branches of Germanic dialects. Vowel shifts happenend in all of them but the extent and the types weren't always the same.
Some modern Swiss German dialects have a pronunciation similar to West Saxon (which later was called Old English). For example the word "ham" (meaning home, still present in many English place names, as indicated earlier in this thread) is pronounced exactly the same as it was before 1066 in England in my own dialect. "Ich gang ham" (I'm going home, or I go home in Untersee dialect in Thurgau) was "Ic ganga ham" in Old English, just to show the similarities.
You know this whole subject about Swiss city origins has me totally curious now and I'd love to read more about Switzerland's settlements history. Can anyone recommend any books in English that might be available on the subject..?