How Different are Swiss German and Standard German?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 เม.ย. 2024
- In this video I investigate the differences between Swiss German dialects (focusing on the Zurich dialect) with Standard German.
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Special thanks to Danilo for his Swiss German samples, and Johannes for his Standard German samples.
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The following images are used under Creative Commons Share Alike license:
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi.... Author: Pyrokrat.
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commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi.... Author: Willtron.
Sources include:
Fleischer, J., & Schmid, S. (2006). Zurich German. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 36(2), 243-253. Retrieved April 21, 2021, from www.jstor.org/stable/44526422
www.eldrid.ch/advanced.htm
www.swiss-german-online.com/s...
www.swiss-german-online.com/d...
www.zuerich.com/en/visit/prac...
www.nthuleen.com/papers/130pap...
00:00 General info about Swiss German
01:38 Differences in vocabulary
03:17 Differences in pronunciation
05:23 Differences in grammar
08:27 Sentence breakdowns
11:03 Closing comments
11:44 The Question of the Day
![[UNCUT]”บิ๊กโจ๊ก” แฉพลีชีพ เดินหน้า ล้างบาง สตช. ฟ้องหมด มันสนพวกใคร I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FIWKnr2ArPs/mqdefault.jpg)
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yo why was the video privated then changed? cheers.
Are you vaccinated?
@@JohnSmith-fo2vh Because I accidentally released the Patreon version publicly. It doesn't have the ads and promo.
Yep Svizzerdeitsch wtf lol
How does the M-W shift occur in e.g. Wir Mir (Sw.)
or indo european generally e.g. miy Russian we English (which sound more similar than their writing indicates). How does M become W or vice verse?
I am a German native speaker and I was once in a restaurant in Italy where Swiss people were sitting at another table. It took me ten minutes to realize that they were actually speaking German.
Hi, maybe you can help me to explain your culture?
Lol seriously? That different?
For example I'm a Lebanese Arabic (Levantine dialect) speaker. I can understand pretty much all Arabic dialects except Moroccan and Algerian. Also for me it is easy to differentiate between a Syrian, Jordanian, and Lebanese (Levantine family) while other people like Saudis cannot tell the difference and almost always assume and ask me if I'm Syrian. Although I come from the outskirts of Beirut itself and was raised in Beirut where my dialect is instantly recognizable as standard Lebanese.
(OK sorry I spoke about myself too much lol)
But can you understand each other ????
@@rhizoidx Yes, that different. Germans who are never exposed to Swiss German generally won't understand it. I havs some friends from Germany and they'll laugh at anything I say in Swiss German because they have no clue what I'm talking about.
@@rhizoidx yes, it‘s quite extreme. So every region in switzerland has it’s own dialect but swiss people have no problem understanding each others different dialects, and someone who only speaks high german but lives/works in switzerland will be able to understand it in some time. But someone who never got in contact with it probably won‘t understand it. Some words similar, others are completely different, and probably the most difficult part is, that many words are shortened and fused together with the next word. For someone who doesn‘t know and understand it, it sounds like a completely language.
It isn‘t really a communication problem because although we really don‘t like to speak in high german (probably a ego thing), we all learned it because we write in high german. So if a german that doesn’t understand swiss german speaks with a swiss we just speak in high german, but yeah if he hears some swiss people talking he will have a hard time understanding them. The regions that border with germany are easier to understand but the more south you go, the less understandable it gets
me: "yay I'm finally starting to learn the ropes of german"
swiss german: *grüezi*
And as another fun factor there are foreign versions of swiss words like the german: Grüzi and the turkish: grüzü:-)
Sali zämme;)
Funny thing bout grüezi is you only use it if you have to be polite, like to my friends i say hoi - hello but to the teachers or people i dont know we say grüezi and its kinda beautiful when u walk through your village literally everyone say grüezi when passing
I'm Swiss and I've never used Grüezi one time in my life
Well there is no real swiss german ther are many different dialects all few kilometers. But you can speak normal german in Switzerland they will understand you. Except of the french or italian speaking regions.
In Switzerland, they apparently use the word "schmecken" for both taste and smell. In Germany we say schmecken for tasting and riechen for smelling things.
So you can imagine my surprise/ confusion when my Swiss friend came for a visit and told me that he doesn't like the taste of my hand soap...
Yeah it even confuses us 😂
He thinks it tastes like cilantro, right?
Actually we use 'schmecken' for the nose - the smell. If we taste something we don't really say: Es schmöckt fein./Es schmeckt gut. We rather say: Es isch fein (it is good/tasty.
If you say schmecken to express the taste, this confuses us.
Buahahaha 😂
In Franconia we also say schmecken for both tasting and smelling
I understand this is considered a dialect but I really do think it should be considered a different language. It is so different, it’s insane.
Absolutely yes.
@@ExtraterrestrialEarthling is that because you don’t know either language or?
@@ExtraterrestrialEarthling And Romanian is like Italian with some Slavic flavor, yet they’re distinct languages. The line between a language and dialect are not distinct and often times political. Swiss German should be considered it’s own language.
Isch es au.
The problem is that there are so many different dialects of swiss german in the different cantons, also swiss german doesn’t have a grammair
In my experience as a German who traveled to Zürich once: the Swiss can understand and communicate with us seamlessly, but as soon as they switch back to dialect we have like a 10% clue of what they're saying, especially when they're speaking fast. It's a really funny experience.
That‘s just not true. If you look at dialects there is no ‚gernan‘ as Germany has many dialects. I grew up in to south and had never any issues understanding Swiss people… The dialects are similiar…
@@isabellekirner4201 that's fair! I can totally imagine that being the case! I grew up in the city (in Hessen) so I barely know any German dialects. I can understand some Bavarian and like Rhöner Platt, but that's where it ends. So I guess mine is just the urban German experience
@@isabellekirner4201 I gloubä äs chunnt chli drufah wodä härä geisch ir Schwiz. Mitem Walliserdütsch, Friburgerdütsch oder mim Bärndütsch hei viu Dütschi Müeh.
@@waynebrady1819 nid nur Dütschi ;)
@@killerbeat2554 Stimmt ou widr...🤗
As a Swiss native speaker, seeing the language analyzed like this makes it seem super weird. Haha..
yeah, because it is super weird.
@@freefrag1910 what is?
@@rickmorty5745 schwiizerdütsch
@@craftah every language is weird when you deconstruct it, none is really weirder than the other
@@rickmorty5745
ich wäiss
I’m a German and speak High German and spoken Swiss German is not understandable for me. But when I spoke to Swiss people they always switched to “normal” German. There still were some difficulties because of the different words sometimes but it was incredible how they van change their way of speaking!
How is it incredible? We often use High german in formal events like school and obviously write in standard german, just like any other accents of german do
You are easily changing between english and german and that's a much bigger change... swiss german to high german is just a different dialects, but the same laguage
Für mich (bin Schweizer) ist es normal, auf eine schweizerdeutsche Anfrage in Schweizerdeutsch zu antworten. auf Standarddeutsch antworte ich automatisch auf Standarddeutsch. In beiden Fällen kann ich mich natürlich ungestresst ausdrücken. Sagt aber jemand zu mir: "Sprechen Sie ruhig Schweizerdeutsch, ich verstehe schon", zwingt mich jede Antwort zur Übersetzungsarbeit Deutsch-Schweizerdeutsch-Deutsch etc.
German native speaker here. Back in the 90s I was studying French in Tours at a university institute that attracts students from all over the world. The year I was there, I had a ton of Swiss-German speakers in my class and, naturally, started to hang out with them. The first couple of weeks, it was like being with a group speaking a foreign language when I hung out with them. They actually had to dumb down their Swiss "accents" and switch to high German for my benefit. After a while, I picked up on things and was able to follow along more easily when they were talking to each other. And yet... it still felt almost like a foreign language to me and not like a dialect. It's not as foreign to my ear as, say, Dutch, but it's not very far off.
I'm from Saxony; I (sometimes) understand neither northern nor southern dialects. :D
How Northerners sounds to me: "Schjo, de lüdde Rrrochn hus de dwarß übbäh"
How Bavarians/Austrians sound to me: "Jaa, I hobs nets ä o a üa ghobt net was senn derfn hoam"
How Swiss people sound to me: "CHabtsnetsdeglooCHegwisssanheyymgmoCHt"
Thanks for the laughter
🤣🤣🤣👌🏻
Beautiful
Haha, genial! 😂
Moin Moin 👋
Let's imagine the following scenario: You are Swiss and are studying Germanics at a Swiss university. The professor is also Swiss. The lecture is held in Standard German. If you went to see the professor after the lecture and spoke to him in Standard German, he would think you've gone mad.
the thing is: always go for your native dialect/language when speaking with someone you doubt that he speaks the same dialect/language as you do.
That's not an uncommon thing in linguistics, it's called diglossia.
Not really, tbh. I am one of those Swiss studying Germanics in Switzerland and we often speak Standard in a "classroom setting" after lectures (used to, thanks to corona). Just if you were to meet the Prof at the hallway and greet him in Standard, it would maybe be a little bit weird.
I have a question for you. If I understand this video without any troblesome, would you say I am fluency in english , at least at listening ? .
@YouAintFromEndz *you're
As a Native Portuguese speaker, the differences between Swiss German and Std German seem as big as the differences between Portuguese and Italian. You can kinda tell they were once the same language but no way you're having a complex conversation without some knowledge in the other language.
Keep in mind Portugal and Italy don't even share borders so this dramatic difference between Switzerland and Germany is quite surprising.
Portuguese and Spanish are much more similar in comparison.
Incredible what a couple of very steep mountains can do to a language!
Good to know, as a French, I can feel it
I would have guessed the difference would be something like Portuguese & Spanish.
As a native German speaker tho`i dont feel the differences so sharp - I would even say we differ like Italian and Sicilian dialect.
That is true. However you need to consider that German has many dialects. And the ones from Southern Germany are kinda closely related to Schwitzer Dütsch. So someone from the north will have huge issues understanding anything. But someone coming from near the region of Stuttgart, should understand it much more easily.
And also consider that all the dialects use Std. or High German in written language. The dialects aren't written. You can write them as this video showed, but there is no Schwietzer Dütsch written language. They use standard German in writing. Therefore only the spoken language differs.
Spanish and Portuguese for example both have different literature and therefore not only a spoken language, but also 2 distinct written languages. It is as if all the Latin Languages would still use Latin as a written language, kinda. All the German dialects use High German in writing and in school and therefore all are able to speak and write it.
@@wariox There are no mountains to speak of between large parts of Switzerland, e.g. Zurich, and Germany.
As a native swiss german speaker I have to say I learned a lot from this video. Most of learn dialect and the standard version in parallel, so we never have to learn differences and similarities that analytically.
I think the thing that most people don‘t know is the difference between standard swiss german and dialect. It really is different up to the point where we consider both our native language and yet (at least I do) only reluctantly switch to the standard version.
Another thing: dialect does not have a fixed orthography. It is actually funnier to see how other dialects write and hearing them.
yup... There was so much I didn't know about my own language...
The really confusing part is that most germans might speak their dialect and pronounce things their way but when typing online casually they will still use the standard spelling, only pronounce it differently when read, while Swiss speakers tend to write thing the way they sound in their dialect which results in an unreadable mess for any standard german speaker
Firstly Swiss German is quite deeply rooted in our national identity, which is part of the reason why we even use it when texting for example. Secondly, reading Standard German in a Swiss German dialect isn't all that simple. It would require quite some translation in your head, not least due to missing verb tenses and different sentence steucture
There is even an alemanic version of Wikipedia, mainly created by Swiss Germans.
@@jnzdg According my research, in legal documents swiss people still use standar german over their local dialect because when it comes to legal procedures, burocracy, legality and formality, standar german is the official way not to mention foreign affairs stuff
@@MrJosephLG Not just legal documents. We use Standard German in a lot of areas. Newspapers, some TV and radio broadcasts (there it kinda depends how regional and/or official it is), school, anything written which isn't direct correspondence between close peers or specifically chosen to be in Swiss German for cultural reasons. We have a situation where both languages exist in parallel and there are relatively clearly established rules for which language is used in what context. In the broadest sense Swiss German is the spoken language and Standard German is the written languag, but then there are various exceptions.
today i learned Switzerland is the Scotland of Germany
Icelander here. I started learning German when I was 14 years old and kept on going until I was 20. Then I studied it at university for my BA-degree for three/four years (took Danish as a minor) and did one year as an exchange student in Salzburg in Austria. Right now I'm almost 31 years old and have been living in Berlin for almost three years, my job requires me to speak German and people here very often don't recognize that I'm not even German until I tell them. So German is obviously a big part of my life, as are languages in general, including the many different dialects and variations of any given language. When I decided to go abroad for my exchange period I specifically decided that "I will not go to Switzerland(!)", because I wanted to learn "real German" XD I then decided to go to Austria instead, because my German was very good at that time, and I wanted to learn a different version and so Bavaria/Austria was the go-to place for that. There at least I learned to understand Austrian/Bavarian accents and a bit of their dialects, but Switzerland was still an absolute "Terra Incognita" for me. In short: I'm a foreigner who speaks almost perfect German who knows a lot about the different dialects of German (add maybe even Dutch and Luxembourgish into the mix). I can understand some Swiss German and get what their talking about, but boy is it still a headache!
I think my biggest WTF-moment with Swiss German was when I was driving around in Iceland with a friend of mine from Switzerland. We always spoke standard German with each other, she had a Swiss accent but we fully understood each other. She even taught me about the relative clause marker "wo", which even she found a bit weird XD Later on we stopped by a cliff formation called "Kirkja" in Icelandic (literally means "Church"). I point at the sign and say "Das ist die Kirche", and then I asked her how she would say "Kirche" in her dialect (she's from Zürich), expecting something like "chirche". Then she said "Uh! Chille!" I was stunned and the only thing that came out of my mouth was "WAS?!" XD I was so "shocked" because of this that I actually spent weeks and maybe a couple of months looking up why they say that in Switzerland including some other varieties.
I think someone wrote it here as well, but I sometimes understand Dutch better than Swiss German :D
I'll e-mail a cookie to anyone actually read this to the end.
If we're speaking of Switzerland, you should email a Biberli or a Spitzbueb instead ;)
On my job btw I have spoken on the phone with people from all over the German speaking part of Europe, including Luxembourg, France and South Tyrol. Some Swiss and Austrians of course and usually that is not a problem, however there was once a women from Switzerland who called us and thought she was talking to someone in Switzerland, so she talks for an entire minute in Swiss German before I politely ask her if she could please speak "Hochdeutsch" XD I mostly understood what she was asking for, but after an entire minute focusing on trying to understanding her I completely lost track XD
@@3erglinG Haha thanks, I'll keep that in mind ;)
@@bjarkiorarson3546 as an expat in Switzerland I learned a nifty trick for participating in a Swiss conversation (works only face-to-face unfortunately): I just keep nodding and saying "jo-jo" in the pauses. But for real, I dream of learning Berndeutsch and being able to pass for a local
Takk fyrir þetta, ég er Svisslendingur sem býr á Íslandi og mér finnst spennandi að lesa um þitt viðhorf (en ég held áfram á ensku svo hinir geta skilið hvað ég á að segja).
As a Swiss person who lives in Iceland and has learnt Icelandic, this is a very interesting read. When I started learning Icelandic I was amazed at how similar the vowel system were between Icelandic and my dialect (Bernese German), I did not have to learn how to pronounce any of the Icelandic vowel sounds as I already knew them all (Bernese German has, in fact, more vowels than Icelandic). Also, some words are pronounced exactly the same, such as 'hús', 'mús' and 'lús'...
Every time I visit my home town Bern, it takes me some time to readjust my ears; at first listening to people talking on the street or in the buses or trams sounds to me like people around me were speaking Icelandic, although this impression fades after a day or two.
A couple of years ago I was talking to my mum about the labour union strikes going on at the time in Iceland and caught myself coining the word 'Wärchfau' (from Icelandic 'verkfall'), instead of using the correct word 'Streik'. This just exemplifies how similar the sound system between the two languages are...
I grew up in Budapest and went to an Austrian school just like my best friend. We both had the same accent through the years(both native Hungarians, but German-only in the school, so a rather standard Austrian-German)
After graduating, he moved to Zürich, and I moved to NRW. We haven't seen eachother for quite a time, when we met somewhere in a bar. We naturally started to speak German (we were in a german-speaking group), and I could barely follow what he was saying. According to him, this was his Hochdeutsch, if he was speaking Schwitzerdüütsch, I'd understand even less.
then he wasnt speaking hochdeutsch at all. in switzerland we use standard german in school and formal meetings
@@fjkfkfkf Excuse me, you seem to know what you're talking about so I would like to ask : I'm French and learned the basic of German as a kid, so, they teached me Hochdeutsch, aren't they ?
I'm currently learning, again but seriously this time, and I would like to be able to at least communicate, with every German speaking countries. Do you have any tip for my accent or anything else ? The French thing that you can't deal with ? I don't want to be a cliché 😂 and be respectful, but I feel that I'm not aware of all
@@Wazkaty don’t worry about the different german accents, if you learn normal german we will all be able to understand & speak with you perfectly. I’m not sure if you’re going to be able to train the french accent away very quickly, but I’d suggest just listening to german media/videos on TH-cam or tv shows and you’ll quickly learn how to pronounce words. Also, almost everyone here can speak perfect english :)
I was born and raised in Canada to parents born in Germany, Schleswig-Holstein to be exact. We spoke Plattdeutsch for a few years when I was young, then switched entirely to English. I only started learning Hochdeutsch in university and took some additional courses after university. My Hochdeutsch is far from fluent but I can usually make myself understood without too much trouble. When I visited Switzerland in 1991, it was the 700th anniversary of Switzerland and there was an open house in the parliament in Bern so I went in to see the federal parliament. As I was looking at the displays - which conveniently had signs in German, French and English - a girl of about 15 came up to me and spoke a very long sentence in what was clearly a Germanic language but I did not understand one word of what she said. I thought I might understand more if I heard it again so I said "Was?" and she said it all again. I still didn't understand a word. I gently explained that I did not speak Schweizer Deutsch and could she possibly say what she'd said again in Hochdeutsch? She seemed taken aback, gulped, and then did her best to say it again in Hochdeutsch. I finally managed to get the gist of what she was saying! She was saying that she was working on a school project and couldn't read some of the signs beside the exhibits because I was blocking her view so could I please move aside! (Naturally, I moved aside right away.) That one brief encounter was all I needed to convince me that Swiss German is *very* different from Hochdeutsch ;-) I should add that when I saw newspapers posted on walls, I had no more trouble reading them than I did in Germany: it was the spoken language that was very difficult for me.
8:00 *"Der Freund, mit dem ich immer saufen gehe"* 😂 I like the almost innocent appearance of 'go drinking' when the proper translation of 'saufen gehen' is actually 'go boozing', i.e. till you're drunk. XD
Yeah, he really went for it, translating to 'go drinking' as 'saufen gehen'. I found it really funny. But maybethis just means we Swiss and Germans really know how to party.
Hahaha! I was going to say the same thing, but it's been 32 year since I spent a semester an der Uni Mainz (bin aus den USA). So I wasn't sure if the meaning of „saufen“ had shifted from "to get drunk" to something milder. 😆
@@John_Weiss Depends on the region. Some dialects can be really coarse and use the roughest expression possible in almost every instance. "Saufen" does not necessarily mean binge drinking, but it can.
Same thought
Had to laugh 😂
In Dutch it’s “zuipen”. Same word, same meaning. When you go “drinken” you’ll have a few beers. But when you go “zuipen” you will not do your brain a favor so to speak. ;)
now we imagine german learners to order something at a restaurant with "ich hätte gerne was zum saufen"
They will be understood - most like they will NOT be served mineral water :-)
PS: saufen/suufe is specifically for drinking lots of alcohol... drinken/drinke is to drink
The thing is, that we understand standard german, but they don't understand us. So if they come and order with standard german, there will be no problem.
:D
if you are ever in St. Gallen, just order "ä Stangä", this does not work anywhere else.
My wife and kids and I once camped next to a Swiss German family who were touring the US. My high school German was good enough to speak with the parents, but their kids had not yet learned standard German. I could not understand them at all and vice versa. Our kids, of course, had no problems with the language barrier, and they all got along splendidly
Have they told you to say the word „Chuchichäschtli“?
@@E85stattElektroyes they have 😅
Sad Fact: Swiss French and Swiss Italian learn at school standard German, so when they speak with Swiss German they don’t understand anything. I live in Zurich since 2015 and I still have to ask people to switch to standard german because I have trouble to understand them. I honestly don’t know why they teach us standard German instead of Swiss German. Maybe because with standard german we are able to communicate with other countries too, but this affects our ability to communicate with our fellow citizens 😅
As a swiss german speaker, I can imagine its waay harder to teach swiss german instead of high german. If you learn Züridütsch you can understand people in and around zurich but might struggle with other cantons. Learning standart german lets you communicate in 4 or 5 countries.
Learning Swiss German as a second language at school would be almost imposible. There is no universal dictionary or grammar and every Canton and even region or sometimes city have variations in their Swiss German.
As a welsch from fribourg all i can say is Gau' 😂
But at leadt you would be able to read a book...
Of course they don't teach you Swiss German, cause it is not a standard language and it has no fixed grammer and writing rules, nor vocabulary.
To respond to your question, from a Swiss german speaker's perspective: we usually, if not always speak in dialect among other Swiss germans, even if they speak a different dialect. This is because even though Swiss dialects are fairly different from each other, we learn to understand them growing up, and they are also pretty co-intelligible, except for maybe the dialect from Wallis and a few others. In other words, a person from Bern and a person from Zurich will speak in their respective dialects and understand each other almost perfectly.
Merci, guet erklärt :)
What do you speak with someone from Wallis? Do you revert to high German? Does speaking high German feel like a foreign language to you?
@@SamWhitlock Nah, the person from Wallis would usually attempt to make their dialect somewhat more understandable. Even if it's hard to understand we can usually find solutions without having to revert to high German...
@@SamWhitlock What's actually much more sad is that we don't learn each other's languages from other linguistic regions that intensively anymore in school. The result is that some people resort to English, which I personally don't like, but then again I'm somewhat privileged because I speak both French and Italian...
@@Tubemax68 I have heard the "revert to English" strategy when I was in the Brig train station, which is why I was curious if that was normal.
Thankfully for the Romande region, the only difference that foreigners must learn over standard French is just huitante and nonante, which are definitely linguistic upgrades over quatre-vingt and quatre-vingt-dix 🤣
Man that was so funny to watch as a native Zürcher. xD Ja Schwiizerdütsch isch scho e komischi Sprach. Mega cools Video, danke villmal!
Man Swiss German hurts my ears lol. At this point Swiss German dialects should be languages of their own.
Hey Adrian! Love your music; cool to see you here. Keep it up!
For comparison:
Jo,Schwyzerdütsch isch scho e komische Sprooch. Dangge viilmoll...
Baseldeutsch
danke vilmal? Ik dachte dat heet merci villmols. Nee nee nee, so geiht dat man nich mien jong :O Ne scherz biesiet - hartlike gröten ut norddütschland.
We swiss do be built different
The Swiss actually always talk to each other in their own dialect.
Unlesd you meet a Walisian or a farmer from the Haslital
@@juttamaier2111 oooof
@@juttamaier2111 XD
It works quite well and is fun. Sometimes if two persons with very different Swiss dialects speak to each other, both parties change a bit their vocabulary. They still pronounce every word in their dialect but use more common words. For example: Berner Oberländer:innen would stop using the word "Bänz" for "Sheep" and start using "Schaf", so the Zürcher:innen can understand;-)
Ich finds halt geil wie do alli Schwyzer zämme chömme und mit enander änglisch schriebe. 👌😂 Sinn mir ehrlich jede do isch schwyzer.
A little detail: „Adie“ or „Adiö“ is also borrowed from French „à Dieu“.
And to answer your question: most of the time it’s very easy to understand other dialects. Some regions have different words for stuff like that part of the apple with the seeds or a sprained neck or familial words. Yet we generally get along well juggling our dialects. Some people speak multiple dialects and automatically fall into one of them depending on the people they’re with.
It really comes from "Adieu" and not from "à Dieu"...
@@jeanforest8060 That's correct, but it just made me realize that Adieu must come from à dieu 😅🙈
Tschüss is also a borrowing from french
Langfocus's videos are seriously some of the most informative (and informed), well-constructed, and highbrow stuff on TH-cam.
Well it's not for everyone, since TH-cam community aims mostly on memesters nowadays, which makes videos more brief and funny, but of course, it is not a template on how to make videos in 2021.
As a swiss german speaker in most cases it isn't a problem at all to communicate with people who speak different swiss german dialect. But when speaking with people from Germany of course high german is used.
@@user-zz7gi2fj9h They're the same thing. Maybe High German has multiple meanings.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German
@@user-zz7gi2fj9h Fair enough, but Hochdeutsch/High German as a name for Standard German is ubiquitous.
I'm a desendant of a south Tyrollian but since I don't speak German I got nothing to say
@@user-zz7gi2fj9h No.. only the dialects from Southern Germany and Switzerland and Austria are High German, other dialects from the centre and North of Germany are Central and Low German
Do you learn both versions of German in Switzerland?
Fascinating!
As a Swiss German who spent the first 25 year of my life in England, then the next 25 in Zürich, and several years working on projects in Germany with German teams I always had a slightly uncomfortable feeling about some Swiss-German constructions I use, e.g. "Mir" / "Wir", and "wo". From your explanation, I realise that my gut feeling was not always wrong! Thanks!
However, you have missed several important differences between Swiss-German and German-German.
The grammar and the vocal differences are obvious, and very well illustrated here: but the bigger differences are:
1) The part of the mouth used: German-German is all lip and tongue. Swiss-German and the various other Rhine-Germans (e.g. Alsatian and Dutch) are primarily in the throat (I purposely will NOT quote Mark Twain). This makes it incredibly tiring for us Swiss to speak proper German-German, even if we can crack the vocabulary and grammatical differences. It explains why Swiss-Germans, even when speaking technically correct High-German rarely sound right.
2) Swiss-German, being non-codified, develops and changes much faster than other languages. When I, aged 25, started my first job in Switzerland speaking the Züri-Dütsch dialect that my mother had brought to the UK in the late Sixties, my Grandparents would occasionally chuckle at my dialect because it was so old-fashioned!
3) In Swiss-German diminutives, of which you provide the examples “Hüüsli” and “Müüsli”, are often the standard form, and not true diminutives. Given a chance, we Swiss will stick an “li” or an “i” after any noun, even if the object in question is not especially small. Maybe we are a little restrained, and claim to drive an “Autoli” rather than an “PKW” even if the car is a SUV!
4) The Swiss-German use of the conditional where it is not strictly required, or even required at all. Consider the German “Ich kriege ein Bier!!!!” vs. the Swiss-German “Ich hätte gern es Bierli...: Which in English translates from the German as “I order you to give me a beer!” vs. from the Swiss-German “Pretty-pretty-please, if it is not too much bother, maybe you could pour me a beer, but really only if you don’t have anything else planned….”. Both ultimately mean the same (a beer please), and from the view of the equally thirsty requestor are equally polite and benign, but are expressed differently. As another example: my Swiss riding instructor invariably uses “das wäre gut ..”. when in English he would say “well done!”.
5) Use of "Du" or "Sie" forms:
We Swiss will often jump from the formal “Sie” form to the more informal “Du” quicker than is the practice in Germany. My feeling is that we Swiss will sometimes use “Du” as an inverted respect form: i.e. “Du” can mean “Respect: you are important to me, we can work together…”, and “Sie” can mean “No Repect: "Why should I bother with you, however important you feel you are …”.
Interessant
It really depends on where in Germany you are from. As a dialect speaker from the Southwest you understand Swiss German pretty well, at least the Basel or Zurich variety. The more rural it gets there more difficult it gets, even for other Swiss German speakers. I am originally from Stuttgart and never found in difficult to understand people in Zurich on my frequent business trips to the city. If you are from the Northern, Western or Eastern parts of Germany you will probably only understand 10% or less.
loool dude when you said Basel, I literally was like "Schwäbisch" cause literally it's easiest to understand that dialect as someone who has studied and picked up Schwäbisch. Even words considered older in some parts are understood by the Swiss. Bletz (patch), Stroomer (Vagabond), Schmarrer (slip/cut), Kratt' (basket), Emb (Biene), emder (immer), etc.
In Bourne Identity, when Matt Damon left the Swiss bank and rest in a park, the conversation between police officers and him made me think "Are those police's actor just amateur in German? Even Matt Damon's talk in German sounds easier to distinguish" Then I found that I was wrong😂😂😂
There is no difference between how people speak in villages or in cities, it is both the same, the difference depends on the canton and not on urban vs rural.
@@frankozrin5611 that largely depends on how far from the city the village is located. Baselstadt and Baselland for instance used to be 1 canton in the past, as such villages close to Basel city sound nearly indistinct while vilages close to the Solothurn border in the south sound nothing like Baseldeutsch. The same goes for various villages across the Bernese country. Some vilages speak swiss german, some speak french and very few are truly bilingual. The capital though is distinctively Berndeutsch speaking in comparisson to the surrounding villages and the Berner Oberland dialect. The language barrier and the percieved political disfavoritism has pushed french speaking Bernese villages to declare for the canton of Jura in border regions.
In case nobody has told you lately, your work is not underapreciated. Please never stop posting, your videos are of amazing quality in content and in entertainment.
Congratulations, this is a very well-researched video! Greetings from Switzerland.
only thing i would correct is that rennen as in to run is very commonly used with this meaning in germany :)
@@sultanbaba1230 in Bern we normally say „seckle“ instead of „räne“, so this is another word for it
@@sultanbaba1230 I get the same impression "gehen" for "to walk" is very formal almost anywhere in Germany.
Oh, das stimmt, die Offizielle Sprache der Schweiz ist Englisch wie überall auf der Welt.
@@campbellbailey9614 your statement made no sense i guess :D
I was an American exchange student to Switzerland after high school - lived with a family for a year and went to Swiss Gymnasium. After solidifying my High German skills, I moved on to Berndeutsch around Christmastime. By the end of my year, my dialect allowed me to (almost) pass as a Swiss, albeit with some idiosyncrasies, I'm sure.
I found that most Swiss were comfortable speaking their dialects with each other and not resorting to speaking High German with another Swiss.
As for me, I learned the dialect a lot like this video presentation, by noting the differences and practicing them until I could use them seamlessly - such as Huus for Haus, Anke for Butter, and yes, the very different verb and sentence structures.
Great video - I found myself completely agreeing with the 'translations' even after 45 years away!
To add another perspective: my mom is an immigrant and learned, as for many other immigrants, High German (or as you call it in your video, Standard German). Additionally, living in Switzerland you kind of can‘t get around learning Swiss German, especially when it‘s the language your kids are speaking. So my mom now speaks a mix because she doesn’t really know the difference and is not fully aware of it😅 so for example, when we go to Germany she can‘t really turn of the Swiss and so dialect words slip in. So she would ask: „Wo sind die Kuverts?“ Or she always uses the Swiss word for etwas (meaning around) which is öppe. She then uses it to say „Ich komme öpper (yes, she even says it wrong) um 4“ and doesn‘t get why in Germany they don‘t understand her😂
At least she is trying.
Gopf, i hen nie gmerkt wie schwer das zum erkläre isch, merci vielmal für dini Aastrengig!
Han ghofft finde da meh Schwizerdütschi Comments. 👍
Du sagtest:“Gott, ich wusste nicht wie schwer das zum erklären ist, vielen dank für deine Mühen“ oder?
@@cia3208 Ich sage da steht "Gott, ich habe nie gemerkt wie schwer das zum erklären ist, danke vielmals für deine Anstrengung!"
@@anthonysmith6413 würde ich auch so sagen
@@dylcana4122 ja und neinxD gopf ist ein wort welches schwer zu erklären ist. ich habe keine ahnung wie man solche Wörter ins deutsche "gerecht" übersetzt ;) aber es ist nicht gott es ist mehr wie ein gefühls ausdruck --> ahhhh ohhh...
Native speaker from northern Germany here: when a swiss person speaks i basically understand nothing, or close to nothing. I understand more of lower german even tho i dont speak it than of swiss german
Is "Hochdeutsch" a lie ?
Wow, I'm from western Germany and probaply understand swiss german quite well
@@frszzzbaguette4804 Don't you understand more Dutch than Swiss German?
Für einen Deutschen ist Niederländisch leichter zu verstehen als Schweizerdeutsch
@@alfonsmelenhorst9672 Wow! That's surprising.
Hi everyone. I was born in Witten (northern Germany, raised in Stuttgart (south Germany). Have been working in Hamburg (very north Germany) and in Munich (very south Germany). I was able to understand all the dialects pretty well. Now we live in Zürich (Switzerland). I can cope pretty well being in raised in the Alemannic part of Germany. Wat is still bugging me after 12 years living here is that they use words we don't use in Germany. If I would have used those words - or grammar - in my high school... bad marks were guaranteed.. My son was born in Switzerland, he speaks high German to us, full fletched Swiss German to his friends. My wife is from Ukraine, she studied German and English at Uni. She does not get a thing when our son is talking to his friends :-)
The Swiss folks consider - what I call dialect - their own language. I tend to agree meanwhile. When we have a trip to southern Switzerland, I have issues to understand. Valis is a good example. I rather speak French with them than in German :-)
This is a pretty whirred but very beautiful country
sehr interessante Geschichte Herr! I have German friends from Mannheim, Dortmund & Stuttgart that I met whilst in Turkiye. I'm interested in visiting your Motherland, I would love to experience your culture & cars. Schweiz nature also looks beautiful.
Fantastic video! I arrived to Switzerland with almost no knowledge of German at all and I studied it here. After many hours of study and practice I found very frustrating not bein able to understand what the Swiss people actually speak (Swiss German). I made the effort to learned it too with some courses and above all real contact with Swiss German. I must say that this video is great as a quick guide to transfer some High German knowledge to Swiss German, particularly for non native speakers. Thanks a lot, sensational job!
Swiss here. With speakers of other Swiss dialects I would never use standard German. Maybe I'd tone it down a bit and use vocabulary and pronunciations which are more widely understood, but for the most part understanding other dialects isn't an issue. As a nation we are quite proud of Swiss German and there's also quite deeply rooted pride when it comes to our local dialects. In every day conversations standard German is exclusively used with foreigners if they aren't accustomed to Swiss German
I've heard this before, but wanted to confirm with an actual Swiss person. Is it true that in the early 1900's, Switzerland considered adopting Standard German as their official language, but then Hitler happened, so those plans were cancelled? I can't remember where I heard that, but I found it interesting.
Another Swiss here.
I agree with OC. BUT: If for example someone from the canton of Valais talks to me, it is difficult even when he or she tones down quite a lot ("embrüf"????).
If he or she talks in full dialect (maybe when tired), I'm out. Completely lost.
Ich finde bei euch Schweizern interessant, wie sich euer Dialekt noch hält. Ist ja nicht so, als gäbe es in Deutschland keine Dialekte, ganz im Gegenteil. Umso interessanter ist es aber, dass praktisch jeder Schweizer Hochdeutsch sprechen kann und so keine Probleme mit der Kommunikation in DE/AT hat. In der Schule beim Schreiben lernen, stelle ich es mir aber schwierig vor, oder lernen die meisten Kinder bereits vor der Schule Hochdeutsch?
How proficient are you all in standard german? And how comfortable are you when speaking it?
@@Alexander_01 Das Schweizerdeutsche ist bei uns ein wichtiger Teil der nationalen Identität. Dies ist sicherlich nicht der einzige Grund, weshalb die Verwendung von Dialekten bei uns so ausgeprägt ist. Im Gegensatz dazu scheint es in Deutschland für eine gemeinsame Identität geradezu förderlich eine Standardform der Sprache zu haben, während wir uns durch die Abwesenheit dieser Standardform vom grossen Nachbarn abgrenzen können.
Es ist nicht üblich, dass Kinder vor dem Schulalter bereits explizit Hochdeutsch lernen. Trotzdem stellt dies keine allzu grosse Hürde dar. Wahrscheinlich liegt das daran, dass einerseits fast alle Kinder auf einem sehr ähnlichen Niveau sind und andererseits Hochdeutsch zumindest in geschriebener Form allgegenwärtig.
As a native speaker of Swabian I have less problems understanding Swiss German than someone from the North, but still... I have seen Swiss TV interviews with subtitles in standard German.
Same... I grew up watching Swiss TV (SRF) and I didn't even know it... There is even a swiss version of Pro Sieben and Sat 1, which confused me back then ^^
I dislike those subtitles or voice overs, as the standard German text often is very distinct from how the actual speaker is speaking. I understand changing the vocabulary (as a swiss speaker, I need context to pick up the vocabulary), but messing with the grammar is confusing. Swiss German dialect has a different, simpler grammar then Standard german - it is possible to translate swiss dialect into standard german. The grammar would be understandable, maybe a bit odd. But the "translators" tend to rephrase the sentences and so the grandma on the alm using simple short sentences, becomes translated into an "educated" elederly city woman, using long sentences.
It's vice-versa. As a Swiss I can understand spoken Swabian most of the time.
I have no trouble understanding Swiss German at all. Some of the words and grammar in Swabian are very similar and I can almost always guess what it means.
American English speaker here, with about maybe 30% German ability. That didn't stop me though. I was teaching a music course in the BEAUTIFUL Swabian Alps (VHS Inzighofen) a couple years ago, in German (!!!) and the students asked me what I thought of their southern-hick accent. I told them I didn't notice and was basically surviving on my wits alone. LOL
Hey! I found your channel a few days ago and I appreciate it so much! Linguistics are truly fascinating, and the way you explain it is comprehensible and interesting! I myself am a german speaker from austria and your videos about the persian language have inspired me to finally give it a try and learn it :)
For me, the videos from Langfocus are simply brilliant. Not only are the videos very instructive, very informative and also very entertaining, they also contribute to international understanding. And that is more than pleasing. Thank you very much for your great videos!
Foreigner in Switzerland trying to learn German: I thought I learned German?
Swiss: Never mind English is better
I laugh so loud 😂 so true
I mean probably because it takes 2 long to get it. After you learned 1 dialect u will probably have huge problems. English is so simple, easy and fast to learn, and everyone knows english here, that it will get your communication game ahead further.
Are you serious? I literally find no one that would speak English with me in Switzerland 👀 except for other foreigners
@@robertadincalevis464 what? We need to learn it in school since 2005 I think. (I had to in 2009). Maybe bad luck, where do you live? If you live in the alps its a bit different. But big cities like Bern, Zug, Zurich you should be easily getting round with english.
@@nyChannel09 Basel. People refuse to speak English with me on a daily basis, pretending that they don't know it or actually not knowing it! Which of the two things I don't know
1. I‘m from the south of Germany where people speak the swabian dialect. When I moved to Switzerland it wasn’t that hard to understand swiss german - except for the words that are completely different than in Germany. Friends of mine from the north of Germany basically don’t understand anything when they hear swiss german...
2. Swiss people are generally very polite and most of them switch to standard german as soon as they realize they’re talking to a german.
als Schwabe hat man es garnicgt so schwer schweizer Deutsch zu verstehen
and some Swiss-Guys like me LOVE GERMAN and LOVE TO SWITCH FOR U BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE =) I love both languages so much! But it's embarrassing how some people get ready just because someone speaks a "funny dialect" ... was always sad ... because the Swiss don't know any real problems or they just close their eyes to you
Very similar for me, I grew up fairly close to Freiburg and the dialect in my village, especially when talking to the elderly, is super close to some Swiss German. We also borrow some words from French which the Swiss do as well (like Salli, Merci, or Adieu)
@@falkus7yt293 Weil die Schweizerdeutschen- und die Baden-Württembergischen Dialekte zu den Alemannischen Dialekten gehören.
Chrüsimüsi
It is so great that Paul keeps running this channel and creating such an interesting content!
Having grown up in Switzerland (close to basel), it's actually really fun to see those differences. Swiss German doesn't have any written grammar so everybody tends to learn some things a bit differently. It's also funny to see that even tho we have all these differences, switching from swiss german to high german is quite easy for most of us, but that's probably mostly down to the german influence in TV and Music.
Basically all Swiss German Speakers will use their own dialect when speaking to other Swiss, but switch to Standard German when talking to e.g. Germans or Austrians. Most Swiss people will have no trouble communicating with a person speaking a different dialect although there's some exceptionally tricky ones for "outsiders" (Walliserdütsch for example).
Oder Bündner Oberländer wenns romanisch schnorren... verstoht au kei sau
@@Gorth_the_Ork den ischs au kei dütsch me
@@Gorth_the_Ork Romanisch isn‘t a German language. It derives from Latin and is most closely related to Italian.
@@davidgantenbein9362 Yup,a beautiful Latin Romance language
So the different Swiss dialects are all close enough to be understood without resorting to standard German? Interesting... That's not the case in Germany.
I'm a Dutch native living in Switzerland, right at the French-German language border, and near the bi-lingual city of Biel (German name) or Bienne (French name), in the Canton of Bern. Indeed, the Swiss-German dialects are difficult to follow; when you get used to what they speak in your company, you get puzzled by the new owner who comes from another valley with its own version. The difficulty is somehow a paradox, as the pronunciation comes close to my native Dutch language, particularly the guttural "ch"-sound, and a surprising number of words are closer to Dutch vocabulary than to standard German.
oh i know this, im from switzerland and when i visited amsterdam i was confused so often because dutch sounds so simmilar in pronounciation to swissgerman. They talk to each other and my brain goes "ah swissgerman, we know this" while not understanding anything at all.
I know 2 dutch and they have learned swiss german, you can still tell that they are not native if you listen closely but from all foreigners which I met they nailed the swiss way of pronounciation the best. It then sounds swiss but you can't really pin point the accent like you could with a native swiss...hope that makes sense.
The fact that dutch should in theory be further away from swiss german then standard german makes that even more impressive.
most confusing part might be the fact, that the dialect spoken in canton bern use different speeds for the words; while all other dialects use the same speaking-speed for sentences (in berne, ä ö ü sounds are prolonged, while the "hard consonants" are accelerated aso)...
I, native swiss from north-east, had less issues learning the dialect from graubünden and wallis than understanding people from bern... :)
there is colloquial german, dialects and "standard german"... people usually dont speak literal german.... there are a lot of instances even here in the video where i could say, if they would tell the me swiss sentence i could also use the german equivalent of the word they use without sounding weird. fischen and angeln for fishing are kind of interchangeble, the only differnce is that fischen can also be used for fishing like fishermen do but it can also mean fishing with a rod, whereas angeln is only considered fishing with a rod. but that is just one of a lot of examples. usually there are as in every other language a lot of synonymes. and people usually speak dialect and standard german so if you are from the south or south west, dialects are very similar. its mostly the east and north germans not understanding a word whereas the rest understands each other much better, also austrian and swiss.
True. You dutch guys have kind of the same thinking when it comes to speaking in some cases. I once read the reason for it lies in the past when old german was used. Obviously we have both addapted words and phrases from it.
Perfectly explained! As a swiss I'm very impressed how absolutely accurate this was😯 to answer the question in the end: We talk to each other in our dialects. Mostly that's no problem at all unless it comes to the dialect of the Kanton Wallis, that can be rough to understand. Also there are quite a few dialect words which differs from dialect to dialect. For example dandelion: in Zürich it's "Chrotepösche" while in Luzern it's "Säublueme" So those words had to be explained sometimes. Also the dialect from Bern does sometimes funny stuff with the position of the verbs. For example "The dinner I made was good" in Zürich you would say:" Dä Znacht woni gmacht ha isch guet gsi" in Bern it is:" Dä Znacht woni ha gmacht esch guet gsi" but after all, we understand each other and man, I like that we have so many dialects here😁
As an Austrian this was very interesting to watch because I didn't knew much about Swiss German. Btw, I think it is really funny how most Austrians understand everything the swiss people say in Swiss German. I wonder if people which mother tongue is Swiss German understand also the many different Austrian dialects?
as a swiss i understand all austrian dialects, plus wienerisch and bavarian....maybe some words are difficult
Also ich denke es ist bei uns Schweizer und euch Österreicher ziemlich ausgeglichen.... das meiste versteht man gut, klar par Wörter sind manchmal tricky aber manchmal trifft man auf Dialekte die so heftig mühsam sind das man kapituliert... zb hier in der Schweiz ist es der richtige alt eingesessene Walliser Dialekt und der urige Berner Oberländer... ich denke ihr habt in Österreich auch par richtig üble Dialekte die nicht mal alle Österreicher verstehen :)
Basically yes with few words/dialects we struggle more with, we also have Austrian TV channels.
Second question first: We grow up hearing the various dialects all the time. So we are used to them, speak our own dialect but perfectly understand each other, maybe except some very local expressions. And we do speak dialect not only in casual but also in very formal situations, and only switch to standard German when there are people present who don't understand dialect.
To the first question: Germans who have never been exposed to Swiss dialects don't understand a word. They have sometime even difficulties to understand us when we talk standard German, as the dialect shines through our pronunciation. Of course it's very individual how much time they need to begin to understand, and Germans from the south have usually less difficulties than those from the north.
BTW: Very good video. I usually turn my nose up as soon as I see someone "explaining Swiss German", but your video is indeed well researched and accurate.
I am from Hamburg which is the very north of Germany and yes it is hard for me :,)
I am from Hamburg as well, and while as a kid i had a hard time understanding southern dialects, it is no problem for me at all now.
to specify: there are even some germans I know that think the german with accent that swiss people speakin when they "try" to speak german is officially swiss german. They never ever heard the specific dialects i suppose, so they can't tell the difference.
I am from Schaffhausen
Also erstmal Kolpliment, mega gueti Antworte gsi, und au in suuberem Englisch.
I live in the northest canton of Switzerland. The border to Germany is about 5km away from here. So i come in contact with germans almost daily.
I have a lot of german coworkers who live in germany and work here in switzerland. And these people understand swissgerman perfectly, but can‘t speak it themselves.
And also the people who live and work in germany near the border understand it very well. This comes from all the people who are buying their groceries or eating dinner on the german borderside. („is dütsche go poste“ oder „günstig go esse“.)
german grocery stores, restaurants,…, have much lower prices. So a lot of swiss peoples near the border go to germany for their weekly shopping trip.
And while doing this, they are unconsciously teaching them swissgerman.
And i think this is very nice. We and our near border neighbours like each other.
Und i dem Sinn, schöne Morge, schöne Mittag, oder schöne Abig eu no.
itßs not only the dialect. i speak both and i can tell you that also the grammar does change quite a bit sometimes
I'm a Canadian who only understands a bit of standard German. I used to work for a company that has offices in both Switzerland and Germany and did some traveling between the two visiting offices in each location. What I noticed is that the Swiss employees of course always spoke Swiss German amongst themselves (they spoke English with me), but immediately switched to standard German when they were dealing with someone from Germany.
I also got to know some Swiss French people. I speak French and could understand them quite easily. It seemed to me that the French spoken in Switzerland isn't that different from what is spoken in France, with perhaps some differences in accent and vocabulary. I was told that French speakers in Switzerland learn German in school and vice versa, since it is a multilingual country. However, the French speakers are apparently taught standard German, so this doesn't necessarily help them with Swiss German dialects unless they pick it up on their own.
This seems very accurate, we quickly switch to English when talking to non-German foreigners. French speaking Swiss do learn standard German in school. And it's true that it might not help them all that much when talking to Swiss German speakers. The thing is that Swiss German isn't standardized and there really isn't a way to learn it in a school setting. For one it simply isn't taught amd on the other hand it would be quite challenging to teach. The only real way it is learnt is by living here and being surrounded by Swiss German speakers and then also you'd probably have to tell them that tou are trying to learn it and would like them to speak it with you. Otherwise we'll use standard German or English with you. People from the French speaking and the German speaking part are at least as likely to use English with each other as they are to use German or French.
Peruvian here who also speaks French: I have a French speaking Swiss friend with whom I speak French and, as you said, I can totally understand her even though I have (of course) learned standard French from France.
In the other hand: thank you two guys for sharing information about Swiss German, I think I learned a lot about it today :)
that's exactly how it.
You described the situation very well.
Swiss-French is very similar to the French in France, with some German vocabulary and loan words mixed in, a slower speaking speed in general and minor differences like using septante, huitante and nonante for 70, 80 and 90 for example.
And just as we German-speaking Swiss have to learn Standard German in school, it's the only thing that makes sense in the French-speaking part as well. They can use the Standard German they learned in every German-speaking country/region and Swiss German simply can't be taught in school. Firstly because there is no standardized grammar or vocabulary and secondly, because the different dialects vary so much, that you would have to choose one to teach, but one does not represent all the others. So if French-speaking Swiss live in the German-speaking part for a long time, they will speak German, French or English and will learn to understand the specific local dialect.
Oh, and some people grow up bilingual, eighter French+German or French+specific Swiss German dialect from one parent.
There used be a variety of French dialects (Patois), which got abbandoned between the napoleonic wars and world war one. If I remember it correctly, there are a few hundered people left in the canton of Valais who still speak it.
Fellow swiss here. Well researched and executed. Best explenation I've seen so far. I'm not myself from Zürich, but its still a good representation of what the differences are between German and Swiss-German.
To everyone wondering:
Yes, the translations are 100 percent correct!
almost..
Swiss people write "ränne" not räne.. räne would be pronounced in switzerland like Träne and nobody writes ggange (gehen) with 2g
@@MeisterPothead No, de seich. 1. Git kei Rächtschribig
2. Schomol öppis vo dialäkt ghört, det wärded nämli d Wörter au andersch betont. Räne cha mer so schriebe. (Zom Bispel en Zörcher wörds eso schriebe)
Zom bispel schrieb ech au "zom" ond ned "zum" (so wies en zörcher wörd schriebe)
Oder Zwoi vs Zwei
cha der sosch no meh Bispel bringe?
If you didnt understand a thing, ur not qualified to value the correctness of the swissgerman.
@@nyChannel09 Idk about you but for „Mir sind go fische gange ubd händ vil Fisch gfange“ I would skip the word „gange“ and just say „Mir sind go fische und händ vil Fisch gfange“ instead
@@noop-Still, both are possible and both can be used; preference
@@nyChannel09 OKKKKKccccKK , Deeeeeeeeennnnnnnn schriiiiiiiib eeeeechhhhhh moooooollllll iiiiiii däaerererere korrrrrrekkkktttttt rächttttttschriiiiibiiiig...NIEMERT schribt so, also 100% falsch!
2, als müesstisch du mer ch dütsch erkläre.... zörcher send ned normal also das esch kei öberraschig. Aber NORMALI schwizer (de gröscht teil) schribed/säged ränne
Me before settling in Switzerland: "My German is perfect, I'll have an easy time"
Me after settling in Switzerland: "Huh?"
Seriously, I can understand maybe 50% of spoken Swiss German in person and less than 10% on the phone.
I've lived in Switzerland my entire life, in a bilingual city should I precise, so I've heard Swiss German since I was born and I've also been through 13 years of Standard German lessons at school aaaand I still can't get a single word when I hear Swiss German. I've always thought it was some kind of mystical language without any rule, but seeing this video... it seems somehow even harder. I give up, life's too short to learn Swiss German.
Sounds about right 😉
@@ChrysothemisJV Don't worry, we feel exactly the same when it comes to the french language. It's a phonetic mess...
@@waynebrady1819 😂
U just need to go to every region were is another dialekt.denn you are not more there.even for me out of swiss.grüsi us Trimbach^^
I sometimes hear from Swiss Germans and Austrians that visiting Germany always feels like walking through a book or a TV-show because the people actually talk like the do on media.
Germany has its own dialects.
@@hanselvogis5142 The dialects in Germany have mostly died out. You would have to go to smaller remote villages to find real dilacts but in the city 99% of the people speak standard German with a little regional twist.
@@zoomerboomer1396 Actually, there is no reason to not use the dialects. Switzerland is a good example how to treat dialects. They use dialects even in cities.
@@hanselvogis5142 Only true when you decide to reduce communication to people with the same background as yours. I live as born Lower Saxon with almost no dialect for more than 15 years in Switzerland. I am tolerant enough to accept that locals prefer to speak dialect (and I am also able to understand it) but still do not like it.
It is indeed so :)
This video really opened my eyes to the reality of the relationship between Standard German and Swiss German, I can't believe how much both languages have drifted from each other grammatically, the consonant/vowel shifts they contradict each other with, the crucial analysis of similar words containing monophthongs in Standard German vs. diphthongues in Swiss German, and last but not least, the sentence contraction of Swiss German. Thank you so much for publishing such valuable content, I really have learned something new today!🇩🇪🇨🇭
They didn't necessarily drift per say. Rather, we could say that Swiss German grammar along with Swabian stemmed from medieval German. If you look at poems and stuff from that time period you'll find that the grammar and many words are actually the exact same. Swiss German in fact has tons of relics from what is known as old German. Even words directly connected to German tribes are used still such as "Atta" (think the Our Father in Visigothic) for daddy. Min - mein is basically found as well in old english. We could call Swiss German and the southern german dialects closer to the original german.
As many of the other comments have also mentioned, the dialects of Southwest Germany are virtually in-tune and intelligible to Swiss German speakers. I for one who can write in Schwäbisch, have virtually no issues communicating with Swiss german speakers who write in their dialects.
the most professional language comparison video ive ever seen. very evaluated. i enjoyed every bit of it!
Thank you! Your comment made my day. 😊👍🏻
I'm from northern Germany and I cannot really understand any spoken form of Upper German. They are like different languages to me. It's easier for me to understand Dutch in many cases.
What is Hochdeutsch then ?
@@diariosdelextranjero The english translation for "Hochdeutsch" should be "High German", while "Upper German" means "Oberdeutsch". The former is the standard variant that is teached in schools, while the latter denotes a group of dialects spoken in the southern regions of Germany as well as Austria, Switzerland and some other areas.
I was really surprised to learn that the Berliner dialect is so close to the German spoken near Limburg (which itself forms a dialect continuum into Limburg Dutch itself). One is usually driven to think of dialects as regional proximity, but Germany kind of bucks the trends with their banding based far more on locality of altitude than on locality on the surface.
@@lisakassandra4222 "Hochdeutsch" is standard german and "Oberdeutsch" is high/upper german. We talk about "Hochsprachen" (lit. high languages) when talking about the standard version of a language like "Hochfranzösisch" (lit. high french) or "Hochenglisch" (lit. high english).
@@TheZenytram romance languages are even more different from each other... I wouldn't compare them to german dialects
i just run into your channel and really highly appreciate your effort on each video.wish you best of success
i’m traveling throughout Switzerland now and i’m nearly fluent in standard german. i’ve also lived throughout regions of germany, and i immediately noticed a huge difference. i can understand maybe half the conversation I have with people… but i get the main idea. luckily, people pick up on it and start speaking in more standard german. i was really shocked, but also intrigued
Swiss German speaker here. First of all: What an accurate video about our mother tongue!
With other Swiss dialects or generally in Switzerland, we are speaking in dialect. When someone from Germany speaking high German visits, we will switch and speak high German as well, because usually German speakers, that weren't exposed to Swiss German a lot have no chance of understanding our dialects.
If we encounter a high German speaker that lives in Switzerland for a longer period of time, we often just ask, if talking in dialect is ok for them.
Among the different dialects in Switzerland there is like a battle. Everyone thinks, that their dialect is the best and mocks other dialects. Especially if you are coming from Zürich or Thurgau, you will hear a lot of jokes about your way of speaking. ;-)
eadbeartöartli ;-)
@@YakoCH It's Äärdbeertöörtli. Greetings from Basel. 😂
@@thirtycrows isch no schwierig aus bärner im thurgouer dialäkt z schriebe. E witere favourit: faabfööteli :D
@@YakoCH Ah joo, denn isch klar! 😅👍
Hämmer hämmer?
Fun fact, swiss german doesn't have a spelling, orthography
That's correct. So if we read messages from someone speaking another swiss german dialect, we often have to imagine how it's pronounced to understand the message's meaning 🤣. How incredibly annoying... so what, feels like living in a land of people with the common super power of secret languages 😏.
Btw merci vilmol für da geniale video!
@@leakekeritz8825 Nah, I'm a Swiss guy too, but I don't have problems with reading other dialects. If in trouble, speak it out literally, and all of a sudden you understand it. What's more annoying to me, because we disabled autocorrecting, if we do typos it's sometimes really hard to guess the words.
(we disable autocorrecting because autocorrect want us to write in high German and is correcting words, usually in an awful way XD)
@@PermireFabrica Apart from Swiss German.
It took YEARS until Google finally implemented a spelling correction for Swiss Standard German. To have to go there all the time and make it clear to the spelling program that I don't want that idiotic sharp 'S' and yes, that the 'ss' is correct, was tedious.
ussert du schriibsch "tsürii"
Yesn't. There's no official guideline but for example Basel has a grammar book about their dialect. But it's more descriptive than anything else.
This video is so well made, I can't believe it!
This video was a treat! You did a great job as far as I can judge (I'm not the best in Grammar haha). Anyway, I'd like to answer both questions asked at the end.
I have been in Summer Camps with German people which most of them could understand us speaking Swiss German within a week pretty well. The funny thing is when we talk "Standard" German. Our way of articulating the words is just so different that we Swiss People even joke about it.
And Swiss German speakers talk their dialect with the other without problems, maybe the odd expression or word that's not understood or known but overall easily understandable amongst us.
I would never talk to another Swissgerman speaker in German. Even german people who have lived in Switzerland for some time usually start understanding Swissgerman really quickly. And there are actually many German speakers in Switzerland. So they just keep talking German and Swiss people normally keep speaking Swissgerman.
Swissgerman is pretty addicting. I only need to spend a few hours with Swissgerman speakers and I'm inclined to copy their intonation/word melody. I try to refrain from doing it because it probably sounds awful to native Swissgerman speakers but sometimes I can't help myself.
@@tarananajaika You're german i suppose?
bini voll bi diär!
@@Schmalik Yes, from the South Eastern part of Germany. My normal dialect is a mix of Bavarian and Austrian dialect but I usually speak High German.
@@tarananajaika in my opinion it sounds adorable when Germans try to imitate our dialect. So I'm all for it. And austrian dialect is awesome i think.
I am French from Alsace. I often went to Basel as a kid as my mother worked in the Spital. I never understood why people were saying Adie for goodbye because I would see them later. It sounds like Adieu in French (farewell) . You only say that to someone you will never see again in your life. This word really torned my brain for a while😂.
In swiss german ade/adie/adieu just means (good)bye. It's just a synonym of the word "tschüss". The polite form of farewell is "(uf)iderluege" from standard german "auf wiedersehen".
A lot of people actually like to say ade merci (pronounced like adee messi), when leaving the bus/a shop or something like that.
adieu is a "never see you again" good bye in french?.
adios in spanish is a "normal" good bye.
@@pelgervampireduck in swiss german it‘s the same as in spanish „ade“ just means bye.
@@pelgervampireduck in French we usually use "au revoir" you can translate as see you next time. "Adieu" can be badly translateted as " until god" , meaning next time we will see each other will be next to God in afterlife. You almost never hear it
This is really a great video, thank you very much. I speak Swiss German. I have no trouble understanding people who speak other Swiss German dialects. All Swiss people speak to each other in their dialects and not in High German - I think we understand each other very well. It can happen rarely, for example, when I speak with a person from another canton such as Valais or Bern, that I do not know an expression they use, but I can deduce it from the context. With the Germans in Germany, I speak High German.
Amazing video! It’s super well done and well explained. Dankä :)
I speak German as a foreign language and understanding various dialects from within Germany is not that difficult for me, however Swiss German dialects are hell... I think that Swiss German should be considered a separate language 😂 Because honestly I can even comprehend more written Dutch thanks to knowing standard German than Swiss German...
I'm a German native speaker and I fully concur. I understand Swiss German as well as I understand Dutch.
I'm a native german speaker and I dont understand any dutch (written and spoken) but I can understand any swiss documentary, also talking farmers from outside the citys, which tend to realy speak the real 'Mundart'.
And I dont understand the dialect of cologne in any way.
@@sternenhimmelfotografierende Interesting, where in Germany are you from?
@@HurtigRunter Born an living in the south, but my parents are from middle western germany.
For me most parts of germany are another country. Different culture and language. Austria and Switzerland are nearby and share the same culture.
I dont agree on the idea of national borders, but on the idea of an 'europe of regions'.
@Darukayn yeah, that would be great. i also like this idea. there would have to be made a standard written form somehow, like in romansh.
"gang go" sounds similar to how we say "gonna go" in English
Right! And it also means the same - literally literally.
And it is similar in meaning, although we will only use it if some actual movement takes place. I think of it as one "go" for the movement, and the second one as an infinitive for "going somewhere to do something". E.g., in my dialect, "si geit ga wärche" - "she's going [to another place] to [go to work]".
Although the amount of "go" is dependent on the dialect. For instance, I would never say "Mir sind go fische ggange". I'd say "Mir si ga fische", no need to add an extra word if we already have an auxiliary verb. Just like you would rarely say "we were going to go fishing" when you mean "we went fishing".
Jar Jar Binks approves
It just sounds similar. Paul kinda described wrong as “I go go” (ich gang gehe). “Gang” is a Swiss accent for Standard German “ging”, which is simple past for go/walk. If it were translated literally, it would be “I went go...”
Some southern American dialects double up on verbs, too. For example, “I done went to the store” (I’ve already gone to the store).
@@sallicio Uhm, what? I can assure you, there cannot be a Swiss accent to Standard German "ging", because that is past tense and there is no past tense in Swiss German.
swiss here!
I remember when i first interacted with other swiss people online in a chatroom (i was around 14 years old i think) and everyone used dialect instead of standard german. It got me very confused since all i ever read up to that point was in standard german from school or books :') so i asked the people to switch, which they thankfully did.
it took me a few weeks to adjust to written dialect but after that i never had a problem again ^^
Wonderful. I've truly loved this valuable video.
As a speaker of Polish I was really taken aback with the Swiss word for hospital lmao.
Can you elaborate? I plugged "spital" into Google translate for Polish, and it was no help, lol
Hm, why?
@@oXPhillyXo its szpital in Polish but pronounced the same as spital
@@grzegorzgrzesiak7498 As we use lots of sch and ch, we have similarities to the slav languages
Older English often used “spittal”.
Mother tongue : french
Speaks : German
Lived in Züri for about a year and it took me a while but at the end I could understand conversations in Swiss German and in random situations at the Bäckerei or the Post I would understand the dialect and answer in Hochdeutsch with a French accent which confused a lot of people but was still understood and accepted
It is such an interesting video to watch because I could pick up all the big differences between the two (Kind- Chind, the ending of the verbs, french words etc) without actually being able to speak Swiss German
Super interesting!
Far the best linguistic explanation about Swiss language on TH-cam.
I like to say that I really appreciate that you focus the comparison on the grammatical differences and not the vocabulary differences, as those are enormous and can even vary from valley to valley.
Thanks. Yeah, for vocabulary I just gave a few examples, because otherwise it could have gone on forever.
The only time I ever spoke Swiss German to a German was to an old farmer in Oberallgäu, whom I asked about the weather outlook in the morning before a hiking tour. His dialect was so close to mine that it would have seemed stupid to speak High German. The funny thing was that the Germans who accompanied me couldn't understand him at all.
It's the same in Vorarlberg
th-cam.com/video/0_gxMrTg-V4/w-d-xo.html
Oberallgäuerisch IS a Mixture of Swabian-Influences & Low-&High-Allemannic, since some Centuries ago, a Bunch of Swiss Families moved into that southernmost Tip End of Germany. Hence, native Speakers of the upper Part of the "Upper-/Ober-Allgäu" have a significant "swissy" Touch in their rarely spoken Dialect, whilst the whole bigger Rest of the "Allgäu" never faced that Swiss German Influence, and is rather encountering Swabian (West-Allgäu & Unter-/Lower-Allgäu) or even Bavarian (Ost-/East-Allgäu).
I had the same experience with someone from Vorarlberg that I met in Vienna
@@Gerhard-Martin Yes, it is crazy how the Walsers spread from the southwest (via the Valais) across the Grisons Alps to the Allgäu. And what is even more remarkable is that this immigration apparently took place completely peacefully, as the Walsers settled mainly at high altitudes where no one else wanted to live.
@@oreopithecus Yes, like some smaller Version of the famous "Völkerwanderung", caused by the Invasion by the Huns. (Est-ce que "Valais" est le Nom français pour le "Walis" ?) Thank Heavens for those RARE Occasions in Human History, when People did something PEACEFULLY...and kept the History Books´Pages white & empty ! Of course, Swiss People are used to live in HIGHER Altitude, than the Allgäuerians are. 8-P The Allgäu ends at around 2.600 m of Altitude Maximum. =)
Some "Wal(is)ser" People actually didn´t come all the Way to the Allgäu, by the Way, ...some prefered to stay in todays Austria and became, what we now know as the "Walsertal"-Inhabitants. Say, is anybody able to precisely pinpoint, WHEN, in WHICH Century exactly, this took Place ?
This was a good laugh. I am from Switzerland, and hearing a person from Zurich represent Swissgerman is hilarious because the differences in the dialects are enormous. You could tell where someone grows up just from how they talk. I actually heard people on the radio joke about how funny guests with another dialect sound.
He could have added either Bern or Wallis, sadly the Zürich German is often sold as the "standard" Swiss German.
@@etuanno Vor allem gits in Züri fast kei Lüt mit ere richtige Zürischnurre xD
@@etuanno yeah, most of what he said in the video is completely wrong in Wallis. Using someone from Zürich is never a good option anyway
not cause I am from canton zurich is that I think using a speaker from the big little city is accurate. at least, this dialect is the most spoken in our country, population wise. in addition, there are several dialects in the central and northern part of the country which are quite similar. considering this it means that this group of dialetcts (zürich, aargau, zug, luzern, parts of schwyz and glarus) represents are considerable part of the people.
big fan of your videos, wish i knew about these type of videos when i was younger, really wouldve helped me out learn a new language easier
Really fun video to watch, thanks!
For swissgerman speakers it's pretty easy to communicate, because we understand the "high german", but also the other dialects in switzerland. Most of the time we hate on eachothers dialects from region to region, but there can be really intressting discussion of how to say a specific word. As excample: the verb have in german is -haben- in the accent most people in the city of bern say -hei- and the ones from zurich say- hend- . There are some words even in switzerland we don't understand but I feel like most of the time I understand the german speacking people.
I'm an American originally from New York who studied German in college. My Opa was also originally from northern Germany. Many years ago, I traveled to Zurich to attend the wedding of a Mexican friend who was marrying a Swiss guy from the aforementioned Zurich. The groom's mother was surprised and happy that I spoke and understood some German. The day before the wedding, everyone was invited to take one of the boats down Lake Zurich/Zurisee/Zurichsee. Besides the Mexican bride, I was the only foreigner there. Once on the boat, the groom's mother stood up and began to speak Swiss German to everyone, and she thanked us for attending the weeding. Suddenly, she looked at me and announced that she was going switch to Standard German so that I could understand what she was saying. She then let everyone know that I had flown all the way to Switzerland from New York. I thought that was very nice of her to do. As far as I could tell, no one seemed bothered by the change.
Thats what we are used to. Even in universities when we have like a group session to solve a problem, the tutor always asks in swissgerman if swissgerman is okay. If a single person out of 30 doesnt understand it, or would like to swap to german we all talk german. No we are not mad about the change because thats literally what we did since first grade xD
Fun Fact: Hüüsli in Swiss German also means the toilet. 🇨🇭🇨🇭
Probably from back when toilets were out-houses.
Will likely fall into disuse withing 50 years.
@superaids Klo is also in Hochdeutsch possibly from french Clos, an enclosed space.
Innerschwyzer? :D
Haha. And Müsli is also a pet name for your wife or girlfriend
Hey, how do I learn Swiss German?
Well made documentation. Greetings from Switzerland!
Amazing Video 👌🏾
Swiss German speakers usually have no trouble understanding each other but texting is a real mess. Everybody spells words differently since there are no rules and that's not even region specific. All my friends have their own individual way of spelling xD
Edit: Even if there are rules (that I obviously hadn't heard of) they are generally not taught, at least from what I know.
yeah lol. In my case I write mostly like the one in the video but my brother uses c instead of g for words like gsie(gewesen)
@@surtrgio Never seen that spelling before. That would certainly take me aback. I've seen "xi" instead of "gsi" before
Almost make you wish there was a written form all over Switzerland every swiss could use, something like a standard 🤔
@@svenlima The idiotikon is a list of words to help people understand. It does not govern what is correct, like Duden used to do for Standard German. Even if there were such a thing, you'd have to write one for every city. For some cities like Berne, you'd have to write several.
@@svenlima you seem rather confident. it appears however that the aim of the Idiotikon is to documents the language rather to regulate spelling or grammar. It also seems that if that was it's aim, it would be doing a terrible job at it, given that I and I'll guess many other Swiss have never heard of it. How would these clear rules, you claim to exist, even work? Does every village get its own set of them? How is that clear then if there exist hundreds of different versions with small or large variations?
I'm learning German but the difference with Swiss German is quite big, I only see more path to learn so much.
Any German can speak Hochdeutsch so... unless you're planning to live in Switzerland or are in Love with a Swiss person just learn Hochdeutsch. Same applies to Bavarian or Austrian dialects which are nearly as idiosyncratic as Swiss dialects.
You don‘t need to understand it unless you want to live/work there. I am from northern Germany and swiss german is even for me almost a different language.
Understand that this is only one dialect. There are many, with quite noticeable differences. (Although they have been slowly trending to assimilation with Zurich German - VERY slowly.)
@@fab006 But Switzerland as a whole is not close to speaking Standard German though? That's not going away?
@@Reikianolla as a day-to-day language - no, absolutely not. But there is some "smoothing out" of the dialects going on, with the vocabulary of influential locations (e.g. Zürich) expanding its territory and replacing more local dialects
I am living in Switzerland , you‘ve done a very good job with this Video 👍🏽☺️
Wow, I had no clue that Swiss German was so different, I speak German as a foreign language and the only exposure I've had to Swiss German was through a bunch of films where the character has Swiss accent and some listening in student books, but those were not like this, it was regular German spoken with a different accent, but this is vastly different. Sounds like a whole other language.
Swiss here. In Switzerland we usually all talk in our own dialect to each other and will understand us - apart maybe from the valais. The valais dialect was more or less geographically isolated from the rest of Switzerland and have lots of special words and even some special grammar. Usually the people from valais tone it down a bit or I will have a really hard time understanding them.
It is possible to locate a persons origin pretty close only according to their dialect - sometimes down to the village.
When talking to germans there is a good chance they will understand me in the south of Germany (I'm from the north of Switzerland) but usually I will talk standard german with a german.
Valais are not a Challenge
The real Challenge are the Dialect from the Muothotal Valley X)
Yeah for germans, the more south you go in switzerland, the less understandable it gets.
A video about the differences between German and Luxembourgish would be interesting
Sure it would be. Letzebürgisch is to me like a German dialect with a lot of French influences, but spoken in a way it is direct intelligible to someone from the Dutch province of Limburg.
I actually learnt some Letzebuergesch
People (including me) often say that it sounds like mumbled German haha
I could give you some examples though where you see the French influences
Ech hunn mech kalmeiert. - sech kalmeieren
Ich habe mich beruhigt. - sich beruhigen
I calmed down.
As you can see Luxembourgish takes over from the French "se calmer" and converts it to a "German-ish" way of writing French words. French loanwords that are verbs often have the ending "-ieren" in German whereas in Luxembourgish it's "-eieren".
Ech war geschter am Lycée (an der Schoul).
Ich war gestern in der Schule (Gymnasium).
I was in school (highschool) yesterday.
Here you can see that "Lycée" is also a French words that's been brought into the Luxembourgish dialect to say "school".
Overall, Luxembourgish is just a German dialect with more French influence than the other Moselle Franconian language
s.
@@aswnl4428 It's not a dialect please
@@vithu864 It's a standardized language since 1976
@@cyrildewaha Gars huesde mech iwwerhaapt verstaan, hunn amfong einfach gesoot dasd Letzbuergesch een dialekt ass wel et och linguestesch gesinn en dialekt ass an voilà hues ja selwer geschriwwen dass es standardeierst gouf alsou huesde domat selwer praktesch gesoot dass et en dialekt war... D Schweiz oder Eisterraich keinten dat och wei Letzbuerg maan mais hunn za net voilà
This video is amazing, a very accurate explanation!
To answer the question:
For Swiss people it’s easy to understand other Swiss dialects. We speak Swiss German together.
It is also easy for us to understand and speak German because it‘s used in written language, in school, in politics, on TV - we learn it early on.
German speaker normally don‘t understand us if they‘re not used to it.
1) The best video about Swiss-German I have seen so far!
2) With people from southern Baden-Württemberg I usually speak Swiss-German as their original Swabian dialect is very close to our dialects... it's a little bit sad that unlike the Swiss dialects it vanishes more and more - at least that's my impression.
8:02 The correct translation would be: *The friend with whom I always get shit-faced.* 😂
True! haha
On the topic of using simple past/perfect tense: While the German translation at 9:14 is correct, that's not what a German person would actually say. In conversation - even in text if it's not a highly official document - you'd use perfect tense in German as well. So your translation of "We went fishing and caught lots of fish." is technically correct, but it sounds very distanced to a German speaker (like being overly polite). You'd probably hear Germans say something more like: "Wir waren angeln und haben viele Fische gefangen." (lit. translated: "We were fishing and have caught lots of fish")
Yes. German usually only uses preterit conversationally for specific words, varying by dialect and circumstance. "war" and "dachte" come to mind as pretty common conversational preterit, where "fing" would be quite rare.
Thank you Paul. In this context I have a story to tell you which I think would be interesting for some. I was working for the Turkish Airlines in the 1970's when I was appointed to Zurich in 1980 as the Manager for Switzerland. As a believer that being a speaker of the local language would be advantageous for the financial success in a country, I started looking for ways to learn the local language, Züritüsch. I learned from locals that in order to learn Zuritüüsch, I need to learn the standard German first. Hence, I applied to the local Volkshochschule to learn Standard German, Schrifttüüsch in the local language. I graduated from the Volkshochschule with a grade of "sehr gut" in one and a half semesters out of 11 semesters . After that, in line with the recommendation of my instructor who was actually a German lady married to a Swiss guy, I applied to a Schweizertüüschbund to learn Züritüüsch. After I graduated from that again with a "sehr gut" grade, I started speaking in Züritüütcsh to the travel agents and the passengers. I realized that the demand for our flights to and from Turkey increased considerably. After all these years this is now a beautiful memory in my career which I still enjoy.
very well explained
You would never ever switch to Standard German with another Swiss German speaker, no matter how hard their dialect. That would be like talking down to them. (Conversely, we switch readily with “foreigners”, be they German or otherwise. I make an effort not to do that when they’re fine with Swiss German because I don’t want to make them feel talked down to.)
I don't think any Germans feel talked down to when Swiss talk to us in High German. We're usually glad, especially Preißn.
@@HurtigRunter If they’re visiting, yes. If they live here and understand Swiss German, I feel like I’m talking down to them if I speak Standard German.
Must be an interesting experience speaking with people from Valais! How about with Romands or Ticinese? Do you speak Hochdeutsch, English or something else? They're foreigners linguistically but they're Swiss too.
@@12SPASTIC12 it really depends on the situation and the involved people. As I live in Freiburg/Fribourg quite close to the romands I know quite a bit of french and I understand "most" of it, when spoken not to fast. So when I go to a shop with french speaking people I mostly try to speak in french (but the counterpart will probably notice quickly I normally speak german) and he/she will speak slower and hopefully appreciate I'm trying 😄 When the discussion is longer I might switch to standard german (which most romands in this region also know quite well. I guess swiss german is much harder to understand for them if they are not in contact with it regularly) so everybody speaks in his mother tongue and nobody has to embarass himself with the "foreign" language. With coworkers from the "deeper" romandie (e.g. lake geneva region) we might switch to english sometimes, especially if it gets more technical.
Yeah, it never gets boring here with languages 🤣
@@12SPASTIC12 If neither can speak the other language well enough, english is often used as lingua franca.
next. an idea is to do a episode on low saxon. include both the dutch and german dialects of low saxon/low german
@Langfocus: if you need contacts for speakers of Low Saxon dialects feel free to contact me, as I know several people who might be interested on both the Dutch and German side of the border.
Interesting idea but it should include a historic perspective that shows a bit the development from Old Saxon and Middle Low German and respectively from Old Dutch/Old Low Franconian and Middle Dutch.
I don't know how much background really needs to be included for a solid comparison, but I am curious about the idea that Low Saxon is theoretically not part of Dutch-German ("Franconian"?) dialect continuum, since it often seems to be discussed as a dialect of German.
@@egrettacaerulea it is a own language.
@@egrettacaerulea all low german sites say it is a language
Super clear, thnx!
that‘s incredible accurate! great work!
another fun fact is, there are no rules about writing words in swissgerman it‘s a phonetic writing. so the words are written differen in the dialects. it happen to me, that i did not understand the text message (walliserdütsch) when reading it, only if i read it out loud i hear it and understand it. (roughly 😉)