Swiss German language

Use

Swiss German is intelligible to speakers of other Alemannic dialects, but — unlike Austrian German — usually not intelligible to speakers of Standard German (which includes French- or Italian-speaking Swiss who learn Standard German at school). Swiss German speakers on TV or in movies are thus usually dubbed or subtitled if shown in Germany.

Dialect rock is a music genre using the language.

Variation

It expresses strong regional, cantonalal and national Swiss separateness, setting Swiss residents apart from those living in "the big canton" (Germany).

History

Examples:

On the other hand, most Swiss German dialects have completed the Second Germanic sound shift, that is, they have not only changed t to or and p to or but also k to or . Most Swiss dialects have initial or instead of k; there are however exceptions, namely the idioms of Chur and Basel.
Basel German is a mix between High and Low Alemannic (most, but not all, Alemannic dialects spoken in Germany are Low Alemannic), and Chur German is basically High Alemannic without initial or .

Examples:

(Note that many dialects use the word Schmutz instead of Kuss.)

Pronunciation

Consonants

Swiss German are not aspirated. Aspirated have (in most dialects) secondarily developed by contractions or by borrowings from other languages (mainly standard German), e.g. 'keep' (standard German behalten); 'tea' (standard German Tee ); 'salary' (standard German Gehalt).

In the dialects of Basel and Chur, aspirated /k/ is also present in native words.

Swiss German only has one allophone, namely . Standard German , on the other hand, has two allophones, namely and .

Final hardening (Auslautverhärtung) is not present in Swiss German dialects. Since there are no voiced plosives, foreigners may get impressions similar to Standard German, however. Also, very often, long consonants are preceded by short vowels.

Vowels

Like Bavarian dialects, Swiss German dialects have preserved the opening diphthongs of Middle High German: , e.g. in 'lovely' (standard German lieb, but pronounced ); 'hat' (standard German Hut ); 'cool' (standard German kühl ). Note that some of those diphtongs have been unrounded in several dialects.

Like Low German dialects, Swiss German dialects have preserved the old monophthongs , e.g. 'arrow' (standard German Pfeil ); 'belly' (standard German Bauch ); 'pillar' (standard German Säule ).

Western Swiss German dialects (e.g. Bernese German) have preserved the old diphthongs , whereas the other dialects have like Standard German.

Suprasegmentals

Stress is more often on the first syllable than in standard German (even in French loans such as or "thanks" - note that French stress itself is sentence-based rather than word-based; hence, Swiss German speakers see their own pronunciation as superior to pronunciations with final stress.) Note that there are many different stress patterns even within dialects. Bernese German is one of the dialects where many words are stressed on the first syllable, e.g. 'casino', whereas standard German has . However, there seem to be no dialects that are as consistent as the Icelandic language in this respect.

Grammar

• There is no preterite indicative (yet there is a preterite subjunctive).

• In most dialects, there is no genitive.

• The order within verb groups may vary, e.g. wil du bisch cho/wil du cho bisch vs. standard German weil du gekommen bist "because you have come/came (literally: are come)".

• All relative clauses are introduced by the relative particle wo 'where', never by the demonstrative particles der, die, das, welcher, welches as in Standard German, e.g. ds Bispil, wo si schrybt vs. Standard German das Beispiel, das sie schreibt 'the example that she writes'; ds Bispil, wo si dra dänkt vs. Standard German das Beispiel, an das sie denkt 'the example that she thinks of'.

• In combinations with other verbs, the verbs gah or goh "go", cho "come", la or lo "let" and aafa or aafo "begin" reduplicate, prefixed to the main verb.
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Writing

There exist relatively few written works in Swiss dialects. Today especially young people use the dialect more and more in informal written communication (e.g. e-mail or SMS). However, most write standard German more fluently than their dialect.

There is no standard language, so the writers use the dialect of the region they come from.

There are no official rules about writing Swiss German. The orthographies used in the Swiss German literature can be roughly divided in two systems: Those that try to stay as close to standard German spelling as possible and those that try to represent the sounds as well as possible.

Two letters are used differently from the Standard German rules:

• The letter (and ) is used for the affricate .

• The letter is used for the fortis .

• (and sometimes ) traditionally stands for the that corresponds to Standard German , e.g. in Rys 'rice' (Standard German ) vs. Ri(i)s 'giant' (Standard German ). Many writers, however, don't use , but Riis 'rice' or 'giant' to Bernese German Rys 'rice' vs. Ri(i)s 'giant'. Some use even , influenced by Standard German spelling, which leads to confusion with for .
  

  Vocabulary

  
  The vocabulary is rather rich - especially in rural areas there are many special terms retained, e.g. regarding cattle or weather. In the cities, much of the rural vocabulary has been lost.

Swiss dialects have quite a few words from French, which are perfectly assimilated. Glace (ice cream) for example is pronounced in French but or in many Swiss German dialects. The French word for 'thank you', merci, is also used as in merci vilmal, literally "thanks many times". Maybe these words aren't direct borrowings from French but survivors of the once numerous French loans in Standard German, many of which have fallen out of use in Germany.

In recent years, Swiss dialects have also borrowed some English words which already sound very Swiss, e.g. (to eat, from "food"), (to play computer games) or or - (boarding, from "snowboard"). While most of those loanwords are of recent origin, some have been in use for decades, e.g. (to play football, from "shoot").

Interestingly, there are also a few English words which are modern borrowings from the Swiss German languages. The dishes muesli and rösti have become English words, as did loess (fine grain), flysch (sandstone formation), and the act of putsching in a political sense.

Distribution of dialects

There are a number of distinct dialects in Swiss German (yellow). Although dialects of some regions are generally differentiated, it is possible to hear which town somebody comes from merely by listening to a person's speech. As people move around more in recent years, this distinction has weakened. The regional dialects, however, remain strong.

The main dialects are of the German-speaking parts of Graubünden (GR), of St. Gallen (SG), Appenzell (AP), Thurgau (TG), Glarus (GL), Schaffhausen (SH), Zürich (ZH), Zug (Z), Schwyz (SZ), Lucerne (LU), Uri (UR), Unterwalden (UW), the German-speaking parts of Valais (VS), Aargau (AG), the German-speaking parts of Bern (BE), Basel (BS), Solothurn (SO) and the German-speaking parts of Fribourg (FR). Swiss German is also spoken in the north of Italy (P) and in the north west of Ticino (T).

Literature