Exactly, and rightly so in my opinion.
I refuse to buy anything from Swiss stores who only offer their websites in German, if they can’t be bothered to offer it in all the official languages (or at least the three main ones) then I’m not going to give them my money. It’s not even because I don’t understand it because I do speak and understand German, it’s the principle.
well, if you use the term ‘spoken widely throughout the entire country’ German of some sort actually is.
Many cantons are bi-lingual. Graubünden - the only canton in Switzerland - is even trilingual; German, Romansh and Italian.
> Sorry, German, for those interested.
I think expats are just mostly aware of the language they are surrounded with. They know about the other languages but they’re (the languages) are not really present to them.
Medea’s links are all in French. Interestingly I’ve not seen any complaints about that.
Yes, it’s very annoying. Particularly those that are primarily available in English but change to German based on a Swiss IP or physical address, or sometimes the currency. And then won’t let you select English (or French). Grrr.
Like you I tend to avoid them if at all possible.
websites switch to German due to Swiss IP? That is ignorant. You’re sure you can’t at least chose French after that?
Can you even imagine how the Ticinesi must feel? How many websites have you visited for shopping that offered Italian?
I have the advantage that I’m not really bothered. I often don’t even notice at first what language I am addressed in.
But what I’ve noticed lately and unpleasantly bewilders me is that there are admin.ch pages only available in German.
Not really. German is not really spoken at all in Vaud, Geneva, Neuchatel or the Jura and that’s quite a large area.
If you were to say ´German is widely spoken throughout a large part of the country’ then you would be correct.
Yes they do and it’s infuriating.
Even Apple does it. French does not exist in Switzerland as far as they know.
Also worth noting that most people in the West of Valis/Wallis don’t speak any German either. ISTR having the discussion with kids who grew up here, now late teens, who never even did German at school.
You need to go as far east as Sierre, which is still predominantly French speaking, before you’ll find much of a bilingual population. Businesses, yes, but not very many of the locals.
Just looked it up on wiki to check I wasn’t mistaken, and found that it’s around 80/20/10% French, German, Italian with “15 people who speak Romansh”. Haha.
Also only there noticed its German name of Siders which I’ve never even seen on signposts driving through or past it.
The Canton as a whole is apparently around 60/30% French/German with a smattering of others.
yeah, well, Genève is widely known as Genf here. Any signposts in German there?
Sierre is also not officially a bilingual city.
The CFF uses both names on platforms, schedules and announcements.
Difference being that nowhere in the vicinity of Geneva is there any German-speaking population, so you would not expect it locally, but you will indeed see Genf on signposts a longer distance away in German-speaking areas, just as you’ll also see Bâle signposted when driving across the Jura, for example, which I do quite often.
Bilingual towns like Biel/Bienne tend to retain both names on signposts regardless of location.
Anyway, I was only making the point that I didn’t know its German name, or even that it had one, until then.
I don’t use the trains much, but now that you mention it I think I have seen it on timetables, just didn’t realise it was referring to Sierre.
In some cases no. Most common, at least as far as I’ve noticed, with Zurich-based businesses, who don’t appear to give a toss about the rest of the country.
Yes, I do often think about that. Is it not the case though that German is still much more common as a second language in Ticino than it is in Romandie? Pretty sure that’s the case in the Italian and certainly Romansch-speaking areas of Graubünden.
But I do notice that Coop, Migros and Lidl, at least, do indeed have everything in Italian as well
Oh, slight drift, but it isn’t the Genfersee, it’s the Lémanersee!
I don’t know about that it in the army when our son was doing his military service last year the Italian speakers were lumped together with the French speakers. They were in a predominantly German speaking barracks.
Depends which side you’re on, but of course only the French language names are ‘correct’ on either side.
I’ve definitely seen it referred to as Lac Genève in Geneva itself, at least.
They basically all do. Most of them are just noch used in daily talk.
Here is an endless list of names in German translations and here is a long list on names in French. Quiet interesting lists.
I think Bowlie lives in Neuss?
It’s the law in Switzerland for shops.
It leads to jokes like Milch Lait Latte insinuating milk kills male potency.
A joke that only works in Swiss German, sorry, sorry.
Anybody got an email from seamlessAI?
It basically tells you you need to opt out to stop them from collecting your data.
" Personal Data Privacy Notice
We wanted to inform you of the collection, processing, and sharing of your personal data. Seamless.AI is a provider of business contact information for businesses. Our customers are businesses trying to reach business professionals for sales, marketing, recruiting, and other business purposes.
If you would like, you may access, delete, or opt out of the sharing of your personal data by visiting our [Personal Information Request Portal] (I removed the link). We provide additional information below."
It’s a long email, won’t put it all in here.
At the end it says:
" This email is a required legal notice; it is not a marketing or promotional email. That is why this email does not contain an unsubscribe link and why you are receiving this email even though you may have unsubscribed from marketing emails. "
followed by … 
… a linked unsubscribe button. 
The sender address actually does lead to this seamlessAI stuff site.
It’s a cheeky one as it implies a “selber Schuld” if they collect my data should I not react while “unsuscribing” is imo the exact wrong thing to do.