Cleared my Deutsch C1 and felt proud for a couple of days.
Well, the STWE meeting put me back on the ground. I understood almost as little as I did before, when I knew only 100 German words 
I guess I need to continue to Swiss German, otherwise all that hard work will be in wain.
Does anyone have experience learning Swiss German in Basel area? Would be grateful for a school/course recommendation.
1 Like
There definitely is one in the Basel area as I met someone who was taking such a course. But I don’t remember who it was with and lost contact with that person.
If you want to understand Swiss German (not speak) and you have a level of C1 in German, just listen to the podcasts and watch videos on SRF, watch movies (PlaySuisse) etc. You will have to do it anyway if you want to have quick results, even with courses.
Haben Sie persönliche Erfahrung damit?
Long time ago I tried a German class and Migros Schule, it was was an utter waste of time.
RoFL. Thanks Phil, that really was funny 
I strongly recommend you join a local Verein, yet, a real local one, like the Imker verein, or any other ‘farmer’s association’. Free training 100% guaranteed. At the Zuger Imkerverein they ONLY speak Schweizerdeutsch.
3 Likes
I can back this up. Swiss-German is an oral language that you have to learn as a child picks up language, by listening and repeating. If I see written Swiss-German, I have to read it out loud to try to understand. In a room full of foreigners with their own particular versions this is not going to work.
Swiss people have various forms of dialect. The version and speed they use amongst themselves. The version when speaking to foreigners which may be a dialect/high German hybrid.
The journey is often frustrating but it can be fun.
Why would I join a ‘farmer association’ if I’m not a farmer? Isn’t this solution a bit too creative?
Do they still give you a medal for a number of posts and comments, like they did in the old forum?
No, I learnt the hard way
I found out which bar the local Gemeinde met in after their meetings
This has the secondary benefit that your citizenship interview is a shooin.
badges here.
quote=“Abso, post:8, topic:143967”
Why would I join a ‘farmer association’ if I’m not a farmer?
/quote
The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is
Stephen Fry.
Very wise indeed.
GGG teach it in Basel, I went to them for German and they’re quite cheap compared to others. I’m still rubbish at speaking German though 
I did the GGG course a few years back. I was underwhelmed, though this may depend on your teacher/class. Whilst I liked teacher, and she was an experienced teacher, it was her first time teaching the Baseldüütsch course. I could never shake the impression that she thought it was impossible for a foreigner to learn to speak the language and daft to even try. She had a habit of speaking to me in English, which I found confusing - Swiss German is a language that I mentally translate to German if I’m struggling to understand, rather than English. It was also a large (18?) and very diverse class, with the whole spectrum of high German levels from A2 through to Native speaker. I fell in the middle of that with approximately B2/C1 German at the time, but still found the class moved at a glacial pace. At 90 minutes per week plus travel time it just wasn’t worth the time investment to do something that I could do in 5-10 minutes on my own.
I’ve made a lot progress with understanding over the last few years just by listening to a lot of Swiss/Baseldüütsch podcasts and going through the book I bought when I did the GGG class.