The other day, there was a discussion about Swiss people not switching from Swiss German to High German when speaking with non-natives, especially those whose mother tongue isn’t German.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Switzerland/comments/1mkagm8/approaching_men_in_switzerland/

I mentioned that, even though I’ve spent a large part of my life in Switzerland, speak four languages (including German), I still struggle to understand Swiss German—particularly in regions like Emmental or Wallis.

If you’ve seen the movie Snatch, you might remember Brad Pitt’s character, a Gypsy boxer with an almost indecipherable accent. For non-native German speakers, certain Swiss German dialects can feel just as impossible to follow. (Not saying Swiss Germans are Gypsies—just making the comparison!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmq5gWKC0s8

by vinceslas

15 comments

  1. So… Periwinkle Blue is *Immergrüüni Knüütschblau?*

    For what it’s worth Brad Pitts character in Snatch isn’t gypsy, he’s Irish Traveller which is an ethnically different group with somewhat similar itinerant lifestyles. Like Jenisch in German-speaking areas.

  3. love snatch, this was the peak movie era. Nowadays the content of movies is just not that entertaining anymore.. Or am I just getting old??

  4. This scene is an even better illustration:

    https://youtu.be/Cun-LZvOTdw

    As for the other matter: I generally speak Swiss German first and ask them if it’s fine for them. Also not going to assume they can’t understand me from the get go.

    Can’t learn Swiss German if you never hear it spoken, can’t learn it if you don’t know what is being said.

  5. To be fair, I am much more fluent in english, french or spanish than my high german.

    So why settle for high german when english is probably easier for both?

  6. I speak six languages (including German, French, Italian and English) and I have learnt that it’s best not to insist with the people that only want to speak alemannic dialects and will not change to German or English.

    I take that as an indicator that they are the kind of people I don’t want to spend time with (e.g: assholes) and just ignore them.

    I also find very baffling the fact that many people will speak to you in dialect even if you speak to them in German and will only change if you explicitly ask them too. I find it very rude to force dialects into others like this, it seems to be designed to make others feel uncomfortable. Luckily I don’t mind telling others that I don’t understand their dialect, but I think they do that because many people won’t say anything

  7. Yup, that would be it.

    Another good illustration could be the bomb scene from hot fuzz.

  8. True, but you don’t have to go for the extreme example of Irish travellers. Your average Glaswegian Scotsman can be completely indecipherable to people in England. Never mind to other Anglophones or non-native English speakers.

  9. It’s like french to creole and english or dutch to afrikaans

  10. Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam.

    I’m a native English speaker, but why should speakers of rare, even “potentially vulnerable” (according to UNESCO) languages, be forced to give up on their languages? What are you doing in Switzerland if you don’t like swiss german?

  11. >Brad Pitt’s character, a Gypsy boxer

    Pitt’s character is Irish traveler, not a gypsy, romani or Romanian.

  13. Yeah, I believe it has to do with the phonetics of the language and the farther away a dialect, the harder for a native German speaker to understand.

    It’s similar in Italy. You could study the language for twenty years and almost not understand a word in certain regions, because phonetically they’re so far away from the root word that you can’t make a connection.

    Then there are specialized words which do not exist at all in German and if you missed the context before, you can’t distinguish whether they’re talking about gardening or a baby.

    A very simple example would be Schokoladenriegel going to Schoggistängeli or Schoggiprügeli. Then you have trivialization or diminutive like -li in the axanple above making the way from Haus to Huus or Häuschen to Hüüsli.

    Reading and writing English is superficially easy for me, but I could never watch a show or movie without subs. And for the life of me I could never understand any song lyrics no matter how academically correct the English is sung. I just do not have the ear for it.

    Your analogy thus makes a lot of sense.

  14. So Swiss Germans are Gypsies? Is that what you want to say???

  15. I speak swiss german. I have heard from several German people that dialects are being spoken more often again in Germany, meaning they don’t always switch to „hochdeutsch“. I find that cool.

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