Hallo/Hoi from Singapore! Apologies in advance if I said something wrong, please correct me too as I’m still learning! Also, if this post is not allowed, do take it down.

I’m heading to Switzerland at the end of Jan for a student exchange program (to St Gallen) and I was interested in learning the language before leaving SG. Was wondering if people in Switzerland mainly speak Swiss German or high/low German?

I started watching this YouTube Channel (Swiss German for Beginners) – [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXrIZ6FIxMkiPUVAkE6Fx_A](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXrIZ6FIxMkiPUVAkE6Fx_A) and also did some courses on Duolingo so just wanted to know which I should focus more on. 🙂

Also, as a plus, if you have any tips/etiquette I need to know for when I’m in Switzerland, do share them with me! Thank you :))

2 comments

  1. We speak Swiss German but everyone is able to speak „high German“. If you classes are in German: don’t learn Swiss German or you won’t be able to follow them and that should be your priority. If they’re not: It is probably still more convenient for you to learn „high German“ because for one you‘ll encounter a lot of different dialects which will be difficult to impossible for you to understand if you only just started learning the language and on the other hand official forms, books etc. are all written in high German. The optimum would be to learn how to speak high German and understand both high German and Swiss German but the latter you can also do here and people can help you with it if you ask (which is probably a lot easier anyways).

    Edit: I feel like people usually refer to „High German“ as German in a more international setting and all the Swiss dialects together as Swiss German vs while in Switzerland/in conversations with Swiss people we call Swiss German German and use High German for the dialects spoken in Germany. This might be helpful:)

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