Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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).
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]
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]
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 ...
In the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, mixtures of dialect and standard are very seldom used, and the use of Standard German is largely restricted to the written language. About 11% of the Swiss residents speak Standard German at home, but this is mainly due to German immigrants. [78] This situation has been called a medial diglossia.
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
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.