Wikipedia is unclear on this point. It says that the Swiss in the German-speaking cantons in Switzerland speak their dialect, but use standard high German in letters and in documents, etc.
But is that just a convention? Could one really not write down what’s being spoken on an everyday basis? I find that hard to believe, but someone here can enlighten me, I’m sure.
It has a written form. It may not be standardized, but it’s a writing system. It’s just not used as frequently as Hochdeutsch in writing; I can’t think of a context where you’d be more likely to see Schwyzerdüütsch than Hochdeutsch.
I have never seen a text written in Swiss German, except for a few isolated words (such as “Grüezi”, a dialectal Swiss greeting which has become a stereotype for Germans trying to imitate Swiss German).
I can imagine Swiss authors writing in dialect simply for the sake of writing in dialect; there’s dialectal literature in many German-speaking regions, but it doesn’t have any major significance. Apart from that, I have never heard of a specifically Swiss way of writing.
This is a difference to Luxembourgish, btw, which for a long time was regarded as a German dialect. In the 19th century, it developed an own system of writing, and nowadays it’s considered a language in its own right. It is still very close to German, especially to some dialects in the West of Germany, and it’s widely intelligible to native speakers of German.
I am not Swiss but what I understand from my contact with relatives and business contacts in Switzerland:
Swiss written matter in German is in the Swiss form of High German, which differs from German High German in a lot of vocabulary to the extent that as a German one is often baffled (e.g. the text “Stossen” on an entrance door would be understood by th Swiss as “push” but by Germans as “push violently”). It is understandable to Germans with an occasional peek at a glossary. Familiarity with French and with obsolete usages of German German helps.
Swiss spoken German (Schweizerdeutsch) is virtually incomprehensible to people speaking standard German.
The Swiss from the French and Italian speaking cantons learn Swiss High German at school in “German” class but are better than Germans at understanding spoken Schweizerdeutsch.
Spoken Swiss German can be written down phonetically but usually isn’t except when the audience is very much local or when a diallectological interest is involved.
As an example: The following is a news text whose spoken form is cited in the German-language Wikipedia article on Schweizerdeutsch. I have inferred the Swiss High German text.
Text printed out for newsreader to read:Man befürchtet, daß die Zahl der Verletzten, die in Krankenhäuser eingeliefert wurden, noch beträchtlich ansteigen könnte. What the newsreader says:Me befürchtet, das d Zaal der Verletzte, die i Chrankchehüser ygliferet worde sy, no beträchtlech aaschtyge chönnt English translation:It is feared that the number of injured transported to hospitals could still rise significantly.
Well, some of us use a phonetic rendition of the local dialect in SMS and E-mail. But we refer to the dialect as “Mundart”, the spoken language, and to high german as “Schriftsprache”, the written language. Of course, when we make the effort of talkin in high german to german people, they think they understand our dialect. When we really talk in our dialect, they don’t understand.
As an example: The following is a news text whose spoken form is cited in the German-language Wikipedia article on Schweizerdeutsch. I have inferred the Swiss High German text.
Text printed out for newsreader to read:Man befürchtet, daß die Zahl der Verletzten, die in Krankenhäuser eingeliefert wurden, noch beträchtlich ansteigen könnte. What the newsreader says:Me befürchtet, das d Zaal der Verletzte, die i Chrankchehüser ygliferet worde sy, no beträchtlech aaschtyge chönnt English translation:It is feared that the number of injured transported to hospitals could still rise significantly.
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Actually, the second text is clearly translated from high German. in Zürichdeutsch (the dialect of the Zürich, i would rather say:
Mer hät Angscht, es chönted no vil meh Verletzti i’d Chrankehüser iigliferet werde.
My now deceased neighbor immigrated here around 1920 and whatever region he was from, he said that they wrote in German because the dialect they spoke had no written component.
Well, call me a literalist (must be my Germanic background), but “no written form” strictly means “no written form” and not that you can actually write it down sometimes, standardized or not.
I guess my OP was really trying to pin down what “no written form” actually meant in the real world.
Is it that not a single Swiss German word has ever been committed to paper (a strict definition)? Or is it that Swiss German is mostly a spoken language, but people can and do write down some words sometimes if pressed (a looser definition)?
There is, however, one visible distinction between the way German is written in Switzerland and the way it’s written elsewhere: The Swiss don’t use the ß letter.
ß developed as a ligature of an old-style s (the form of s resembling an f; it also appears in the Declaration of Independence) and a z. It’s spoken as an unvoiced s, but it can also make the preceding vowel longer.
There was an orthography reform in Germany a few years ago where ß was replaced by ss in many instances. The Swiss don’t use it altogether, writing ss instead every time. It’s a clear indicator of Swiss texts.
Other than that, I don’t know of any distinctly Swiss writing styles.
By that definition, every language has a written form: The International Phonetic Alphabet can always be used, for example, or someone could come up with a completely ad-hoc method to make notes for later. Creating a written form is not a formalized process.