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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]
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]
[a] [2] [1] It has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Although most Swiss are German-speaking, national identity is fairly cohesive, being rooted in a common historical background, shared values such as federalism and direct democracy, [15] and Alpine symbolism.
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 ...
The official formal language used by governmental institutions, print, news, schools and universities, courts, theatres and in any kind of written form is the Swiss variety of Standard German, while the spoken language is Zurich German (Züritüütsch), one of the several more or less distinguishable, but mutually intelligible Swiss German ...
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.