Moreover there's an interesting guide on how to write Allemanic, geared towards Wikipedia contributors. It may be of use to those who are in the writing group.
Have you viewed these?
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/archive/t-667284.html learn a swiss word a day
http://wikitravel.org/en/Swiss-German_phrasebook
http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Swiss_German_(linguistics)
Yes and no. The Wiki alemanisch is written in different kinds of spelling anyway, they do not respect all these rules.
They can write how they like, but there are a couple of purely etymologically wrong decisions. One example:
Of course, it is wrong to write gbore, because it is just not said that way. But gebore is a local or modern ge- prefix that does not stand the history of the area:
When g- stands before p,t,k, it is absorbed (assimilated) by it and there is no trace of it. This is why he writes ko in the example above (for gekommen).
When g- stands before b.d,g, it is also assimilated, but it mutes them to p,t,k. Actually, if you want to be linguistically perfectly accurate, you should historically linguistically correctly write pore for geboren. If you argue that your alemanic dialect does not have p,t,k anyway, then it just assimilates totally as b,d,g and there is not ge - as this - e- is an etymologic contradiction.
But there is nothing wrong with a modernized form, as long as one knows it is a modernized form and one accepts it as such.
This website does not give a satisfactory spelling answer to the long vowels, they do as they want and how they feel. Fine, nothing wrong with that but why just with the long vowels and not the rest too? They want a normalization of the spelling, they should not forget parts of it on the way.
In other words: it is an attempt to propose a unifying spelling, but it is as weak as any other attempt made before. If you write Swiss German or Alemanic, make you own decisions based on the linguistical facts you can get your hands on, and this message is just yet an other very limited and modest stone to that building.
I'm ordering a copy of this from Stauffacher, for pick-up in Bern. Had no idea such a thing was available and even 'peppered' with Bern regional dialect. Wooohooo! Until now I planned to rely on "Hoi," but found out it's Zurich dialect and almost every phrase has to be 'translated' to Bernese. Ufff.
Many thanks to all the contributions to this thread!
I use Pimsleur (From iTunes store, think $105AUD all up), it's excellent!
A while ago, I've seen a Swiss German TV course on one of the Italian channels.
The program is called Corso di Schwiizerdüütsch
on RSI2, on Sunday from 8:30-9:00
Here is the new website for Podcasts from Migros Clubschule.
Besides several languages (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish etc.) there are podcasts on Swiss German.
Hallo,
I found this forum is very practical. Is there any online free language course of Swiss German for the beginners? I am very much grateful for all of you.
usha with regards
Hallo,
I found this forum is very practical. Is there any online free language course of Swiss German for the beginners? I am very much grateful for all of you. I am reading studio d A1 at home. Also I have Langencheidt Eurodictionary.
usha with regards
This list by itinerant is great!
Unfortunately the list of Swiss German classes is rather short and only one of them, Swissing, does not require prior knowledge of standard German. However it's more than double the cost of other language courses I've seen.
Does anyone else know of any other Swiss German courses for beginners in Zurich that do not require knowledge of standard German?
(Please don't argue with me about taking standard German first. I've made my decision.)
Thanks.
Please do not forget that education here goes on in Standard German and not in dialect. And also realize that almost everything in writing, from personal letters to things in the supermarket all are in Standard German.
The Dialäkt-Tümelei so dominant in the rather childish and primitive "Lokalradios" so is abhorrent to me, as is Dialekt used in churches
That's the theory. Not always carried out in practice. (Evidence, 5 schools across two communities...)
If you knew the number of teachers with horrendous high German even in Gymnasium, you'd move to Hannover first thing tomorrow. The younger under 40 Gerneration of teachers is definitely worse. Something must have happened in the 80ies classrooms.
It might be even worse in the future because the two trainees we have this year do not speak a High German that would make it possible for them to teach in Germany.
That being said, every single German teacher in Switzerland, and quite many from other subjects, I ever spoke to had a very high level clearly above most average Germans. Immerhin, c'est déjà ça.
the list is very good, but you will realize very quickly that the only proper learning materials for Swiss German are written in German. if your native language is English you will be totally lost if you are stuck relying on the English to Swiss German materials, most of which are candidly nothing more than an attempt to make money of English speakers.
not arguing with your approach, but you will find your ability to learn Swiss German improves exponentially if you take a German course at the same time.
Interesting. I have indeed considered learning Standard German at the same time. However, from experience, I actually learn languages better from native speakers rather than from books. I was told that Swissing teachers avoid speaking any language except the target language. That's the way it should be in books too, ie, no English and no German. unfortunately many Swiss seem to have too low of an opinion of their own language to teach it as any language should be: immersion style without dependence on other languages, eg, German or English.
most of the stuff you actually use you can (and should) learn from native speakers, which includes accent, vocabulary, and most importantly phrasing and idioms. but the raw basics such as word order and grammar will frustrate the living hell out of you without a backbone in German, since you will not find a native Swiss German speaker who can explain the grammar structure to you in a way that will make sense to a native English speaker and the learning materials from English to Swiss German are also less than great. native German speakers will also frustrate you but the learning materials from English into German are easy to find and standardized -and once you understand the basics in German you will find the bridge to Swiss German must easier to cross.
one other plus is that you can always do your German homework twice - once in German and once in Swiss German (this is what I did). this way you will better learn the key differences between the two, and building your Swiss German vocab will be a lot easier if you know how to translate the word you're looking for into German so that you can actually look it up in a dictionary (of course the Swiss German and German usage of the same word can be different, e.g. laufen, but generally they are in the same ballpark).
This is why the government of the Canton of Zürich issued very very strict guidelines about the issue some two years ago.
In the Canton of Schaffhausen, even the meetings of both the Cantonal and the City parliament are done strictly in Standard German
A cousin of me was teacher in a professional school in the Canton of Aargau up to his retirement and always kept to Standard German. In the meantime, they also in Aargau stiffened the rules.
Everybody stiffen the rules and the tone is some schools is getting more and more prescriptive. There must be good reasons for it, I suppose...
He made his decision, let him suffer.
Something indeed DID happen in the 80ies, but not in the classrooms but on radio. Private radio stations came up. I at the start of the liberalisation welcomed the liberalisation absolutely. But when I realized that Dialäkt-Tümelete & Provinzialismus were "de rigueur" among the new "local radios" I felt forced to reconsider.
That's a way of saying it
I'd rather encourage you to believe the linguists when they tell people about dialects and language normalization. You will eventually, apparently it will take a very long time with you, understand what diglossia is. German is not a different language when used in teaching Swiss dialects, but you don't know that yet. Just learn whatever you want, it's always positive to learn. Good luck, sincerely.