Swiss Freutsch

Switzerland, as you might know, is bordered by several countries - France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Austria, Italy. The linguistic result of this is that the languages from all these countries come together and swirl around in a party mix of grammar and lexicons.

As we headed westward on our trip and finally hit Zürich, there was significantly more French influence (much to the delight of Kristen, who was more or less beat over the head with Deutsch all week from all around after coming in to German country). On the map above, Zürich is still right in the middle of German-speaking area, but by no means does this say that there is no influence from the other languages there. (The map is also a few years old now).

Not only is the Swiss accent in German hugely different here (oh my god... now I was brutally beat over the head by a language I know but can't fully understand), but there are sometimes seamless infiltrations of French words into otherwise German conversations.

For example, a lady passing us on the street who was ending her phone conversation:

"Danke, merci, tschau!

(And even the last word could just as easily been "ciao!": The Germans did pick that one up from the Italians already.)

And on the train ride back from Zürich into Germany, the concessions man:

"Danke, Monsieur."

Mmm, linguistic soup. Now everything could be delightful again if the Swiss accent would stop twisting my brain into contorted and uncomfortable positions.