Swiss German

Ideal for people who already have a very good knowledge of High German, live in German-speaking Switzerland and would like to understand or speak dialect.

Unlike most regional languages in modern Europe, Swiss German is the spoken everyday language of all social levels in cities, as well as in the countryside. Using the dialect conveys neither social nor educational inferiority. There are a few settings where speaking Standard German is demanded or polite, e.g., in education (but not during breaks in school lessons, where the teachers will speak in the dialect with students), in multilingual parliaments (the federal parliaments and a few cantonal and municipal ones), in the main news broadcast or in the presence of non-Alemannic speakers. This situation has been called a “medial diglossia”, since the spoken language is mainly the dialect, whereas the written language is mainly (the Swiss variety of) Standard German. Interested? Let’s start!