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The four national languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian, and Romansh. [3] German, French, and Italian maintain equal status as official languages at the national level within the federal administration of the Swiss Confederation, while Romansh is used in dealings with people who speak it. [4]
While the French-speaking Swiss prefer to call themselves Romands and their part of the country la Romandie, the German-speaking Swiss used to refer to (and, colloquially, still do) the French-speaking Swiss as "Welsche", and to their area as Welschland, which has the same etymology as the English Welsh (see Walha).
Linguistically, Alemannic is divided into Low, High and Highest Alemannic, varieties all of which are spoken both inside and outside Switzerland. The only exception within German-speaking Switzerland is the municipality of Samnaun, where a Bavarian dialect is spoken. The reason Swiss German dialects constitute a special group is their almost ...
These countries (with the addition of South Tyrol of Italy) also form the Council for German Orthography and are referred to as the German Sprachraum (German language area). Since 2004, Meetings of German-speaking countries have been held annually with six participants: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Switzerland: [1]
Swiss Standard German [1] [2] [3] (SSG; German: Schweizer Standarddeutsch), [4] or Swiss High German [5] [6] [7] [note 1] (German: Schweizer Hochdeutsch [8] or Schweizerhochdeutsch [9]; Romansh: Svizzers Alt Tudestg), referred to by the Swiss as Schriftdeutsch, or German: Hochdeutsch, is the written form of one of four national languages in Switzerland, besides French, Italian, and Romansh. [10]
The Italian-speaking Swiss (Svizzeri italiani, see also Swiss Italian), traditionally speakers of Lombard language (Ticinese varieties, as well as the dialects of the Bregaglia, Poschiavo and Mesolcina valleys in Grisons) today partly assimilated to the standard Italian language, amalgamated from Raetians and Lombards.
Switzerland lies at the crossroads of several major European cultures. Three of the continent's major languages, German, French and Italian, are national languages of Switzerland, along with Romansh, spoken by a small minority. Therefore, Swiss culture is characterized by diversity, which is reflected in a wide range of traditional customs.
Zurich German (natively Züritüütsch [ˈtsyrityːtʃ] ⓘ; Standard German: Zürichdeutsch) is the High Alemannic dialect spoken in the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. Its area covers most of the canton, with the exception of the parts north of the Thur and the Rhine , which belong to the areal of the northeastern (Schaffhausen and Thurgau ...