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The German-speaking part of Switzerland (German: Deutschschweiz [ˈdɔʏtʃ.ʃvaɪts] ⓘ; French: Suisse alémanique; Italian: Svizzera tedesca; Romansh: Svizra tudestga) comprises about 65 percent of Switzerland (North Western Switzerland, Eastern Switzerland, Central Switzerland, most of the Swiss Plateau and the greater part of the Swiss Alps).
It covers the area of the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel, and Jura as well as the French-speaking parts of the cantons of Bern (German-speaking majority), Valais (French-speaking majority), and Fribourg (French-speaking majority). 1.9 million people (or 24.4% of the Swiss population) live in Romandy. [16]
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]
The role played by dialects in each linguistic region varies dramatically: in German-speaking regions, Swiss German dialects have become more prevalent since the second half of the 20th century, especially in the media, and are used as an everyday language for many, while the Swiss variety of Standard German is almost always used instead of ...
Switzerland's 13 institutes of higher learning enrolled 99,600 students in the academic year of 2001–02. About 25% of the adult population hold a diploma of higher learning. According to the CIA World Factbook data for 2003, 99% of the Swiss population aged 15 and over could read and write, with the rate being identical for both sexes.
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.
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 ...