Swiss German in Migros Klubschule

Hi,

I am thinking about taking a Swiss German course at the Migros Klubschule, and I wanted to know if anybody had experience with it.

My German is ok, but I really want to be fluent in Swiss German. Unfortunately, it is not easy to find some courses and I am not progressing by just studying by myself. So, I was thinking about the Klubschule, but I went there for a German course a couple of years ago and I was absolutely disappointed. The course was extremely bad.. Therefore, I am skeptical and wondered if anybody could give me a review of the Swiss German course at Migros?

Thanks in advance for your comments.

This depends so much on the individual teacher- so difficult to comment.

What was disappointing about the German course?

I guessed so... The course was basically reading a book and then having exercices and correcting them in class. At no point, we were encouraged to speak or to communicate.

I took a month off, to go to an intensive german course after that. It helped me a lot...

I just don't want to throw my money away. One useless course is money and time wasted. By doing twice the same mistake would be way worse.

I did the B1 at Migros Klubschule in Oerlikon, the teacher wasn't good, he was friendly but I didn't learn a lot. Luckily I passed, and also did B2 - as paid for by my employer. The female (slightly older, probably retired) teacher was great. Very interactive, I learned a lot.

As said by others, the teacher will make or break the course. Pot luck probably

Wow- sounds terrible.

Personally I would go to the Migrosschule office and explain I had a very bad experience previously, and ask to try 2 lessons without being committed to the course. 2 lessons, or even 1- should clearly show how communicative and effective the teacher is.

That's much less likely to happen in a Swiss German course as Swiss German is more of a spoken 'language' than a written one.

I think Migros allow you to do a trial lesson before you commit in any case so I would do that first. ( they certainly do for the sports classes so I don't see why they wouldn't for languages.)

That class sounds like a nightmare and a sure fire way to put people off learning a language.

The instructor, materials, and rest of the class make a big difference, I think.

I would wager that the students in a Swissgerman class are different from those in a Highgerman one. I suspect that there will be less people trying to learn Swissgerman because RAV, the immigration authority, an Employer, or a partner thought it was about time that they learned some proper German.

Sorry I can't help with the specific query. But.......

I just wonder what kind of Swiss German you are taught in such a course.

As there is no standard Swiss German.

E.g. what they consider/ed standard sometimes, as it was my with childrens song and story tapes and such stuff, THAT rises my hackles, as it is heavily influenced by ZH German.....nightmare!

I wonder if I should start some kind of private Swiss German , conversation classes, in the beautiful Bernese Dialect,....

I would come to that. My high German isn't bad and I can make myself understood pretty well but then I get frustrated as people usually reply in Swiss German and I don't have a clue what they're saying.

It's OK in Bienne as they mostly speak French as well but in Bern or Murten it's a different story.

Well, in Biel you are lucky, in that you can hold a conversation in a store bilingually and both parties get what the other means.

But our Biel-Bienne Newspaper has often stated that the town is tending towards more german than french.

So if you happen to be in the vincinity one day, gimme a shout and you'll get a Bärner Kafi and some convo...just like that

I did the Swiss German foundation course at Migros and to be honest it was a bit hit and miss.

Firstly I thought that the course would start with numbers, day of the week etc but instead we began with parts of the house and other things which I didn't really think was useful and wasn't really the things that I was wanting to use in daily life.

The teacher was lovely but insisted on singing traditional Swiss German songs with us which was fun but I felt like I didn't learn very much. And we started with a full class of 14 but ended up with 3 of us after about 6 weeks.

Also my High German was definitely not good enough when you consider that the High German words in the textbook were new to me so I was basically learning two languages at once. I think the minimum requirement of B1 for this course is probably too low.

Others may have different opinions but that is mine for what it's worth

Many moons ago I had more time and used to go the EF German Conversation evening organised by the great prof. taratonga ; just checked and the meet-up is still going on, next occasion is tomorrow:

http://www.englishforum.ch/calendar....=2016-8-31&c=1

Anyway, we established a smaller group withing that group with the aim of learning Swiss German (with a text book and usually one or two native speakers). That sub-group might still be going on.

Unfortunately due to work and other things I had to stop going, but if in Zurich you might want to give it a try.

Hi

I did this course some years back in Bern. I could speak high German but wanted to learn the swiss parts that i did not know.

The problem that I had with this course was the rest of the group.

1 German Lady (perfect german - wanted the same as me)

1 younger lady that had grown up in Switzerland ( she spoke perfect Swiss german but wanted to learn to write it...)

3-4 others that spoke zero German in any way

Now try to make this class interesting for all

It did not really work, but i did learn a few things

I am sorry but dialects are not wriiten -- all writng. also private correspondence , id done in Standard German

some dialect samples

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btc61ohhQ94

and here a text in dialect http://www.radiomunot.ch/sendungen/podcasts to practice ---- start with the Stammtisch

and here a nice Translation from Schaffuersch into Züritüütsch

Taar da da? –

Ja, da taar da. –

Da da da taar!»

Übersetzung:

Darf das daas ? dass äs daas darf

You're right Wolli. She may have had ulterior motives, or been a Basler.

I did the Migros Swiss German course in Lucerne and the course book was based on the St. Gallen dialect.

Instead of learning helpful every day phrases and vocab we seemed to spend each lesson dissecting a 'humerous' Polo Hofer song. I personally found it a waste of time and money.

Really?

Actually this topic is very close to my heart, my dialect is the biggest part of my identity! And I am very proud that said dialect is always in the top 3 of polls about which one the people like to hear the most !

Whilst there is indeed no set standard, like with High German...there have been books about Swiss German Dialects and their grammar and spelling since the beginning of the 20th century.

At least for Bärndüütsch, there have been quite a few books been issued about some rules to follow to make a text more homogenic and easier to read. And quite some of the rules, I follow for my published scribblings too.

One of the esteemed Bernese dialect writers, Werner Marti has already in 1972 published a book called "Bärndütschi Schribwys", followed by an even bigger and better,

"Berndeutsch-Grammatik für die heutige Mundart zwischen Thun und Jura . Francke, Bern 1985".

Also the writer Rudolf von Tavel, whose Swiss German books were published 1901 to 1933, has set a certain Standard many follow to this day.

His speciality was also to fine tune between the plain city dialcet and how the ̈patricians" (nobility) spoke.

Of course these are only rules set by a few esteemed writers and only for the Bärndüütsch from the city of Berne......

In my Canton alone, with the Emmental, Frutigtal, Simmental and Saanenland to name but a few, those books are more or less unusable, simply because of the richness of their own dialects and their own words, in the aforementioned valleys, which have often not much in common with the dialect in the city.

And this is the main problem to issue a standard for written swiss german.

It is simply impossible to boil it down to a standard for the german speaking Valaisian as well as for the Basilean, Appenzeller or Bündner.

So, even if there are no set rules, written Swissgerman is not an impossibility and 'not written' per se.

Crikey this was a trilingual course then.

No joke aside,

This is what I meant in my previous post.....what help is it to someone living in LU, learning the SG dialect by dissecting the Songs of a Bernese Oberland guy....."facepalm"@ MigrosKlubschule

My mothers Spanish girl-friend went to the Migros Courses for Swiss-German and she was much better integrated in the village community afterwards. If you only need to talk the language here for private life such as finding friends, shopping ecc. I would advise Swiss-German and not High German classes because Swiss are not so fond of the Germans... at least concerning the one's with a to direct attitude...

There was a thread how to find Swiss friends, well that is one of the ways to do it: go to Swiss-German classes... :-)