Freitag, März 31, 2006
Switzerland
I just came back from Switzerland. What was planned as a visit of a friend who is doing an internship in Basal turned out to an interesting cultural experience. Of course that is very natural given that I was in a different country… but somehow I never considered Switzerland very different from Germany. Because I wasn’t prepared the foreign habits and realities came as a surprise and were most impressive…
Somehow the fact that they call their language (or better: one of their languages…) ‘Swiss German’ suggests that it is related to ‘German’. I can tell you that it’s not. Ja, when they make an effort to speak ‘High German’ it is possible to understand what they say. The interesting thing is that even when their spoken dialect sounds so different to German it is written the same! In combination with Italian and French words that are integrated into people’s language it is not surprising that they become a little schizophrenic in their communication :-)
