# How did Swiss Italians come to speak almost standard Italian? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 11, 2011, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-swiss-italians-come-to-speak-almost-standard-italian/602548 "2011-11-11T00:18:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-swiss-italians-come-to-speak-almost-standard-italian/602548/1 "2011-11-11T00:18:11Z")
How did the Swiss in Italy come to speak almost standard Italian? Between Tuscany and south Switzerland there’s quite a few dialects of Italian that could quite legitimately claim to be distinct languages they’re that different from Tuscan, yet the Swiss Italians speak, with a few changes, almost standard Italian, and not some incomprehensible dialect. How did this happen? Was there a lot of Italian emigration into Southern Switzerland post unification? ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-swiss-italians-come-to-speak-almost-standard-italian/602548/2 "2011-11-11T00:19:20Z")
Crap, posted in the wrong forum. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-swiss-italians-come-to-speak-almost-standard-italian/602548/3 "2011-11-11T00:20:08Z")
Moved MPSIMS --\> GQ. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-swiss-italians-come-to-speak-almost-standard-italian/602548/4 "2011-11-11T04:03:57Z")
Well, Florentine/Tuscan began to gain ascendance as an official and literary language during the 14th century. Tuscany was the major power in northern Italy by the 15th century, roughly the same time that Ticino (the heart of Italian Switzerland) was conquered by the Swiss Confederation. Before that, it was dominated by the Duchy of Milan, and the Lombard language spoken there is still common in Italian-speaking areas, even as it declined under various moves to standardize the language in Italy. There has always been some pretty heavy immigration into Switzerland from Italy, and I’d guess this has reinforced Standard Italian as the base of Swiss Italian. ---
**Author:** ![Anaglyph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Anaglyph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaglyph)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-swiss-italians-come-to-speak-almost-standard-italian/602548/5 "2011-11-11T09:12:11Z")
Swiss italians have their own dialects which differ quite a bit from standard Italien, but at school they learn and use standard Italian. It’s a bit like Swiss German and standard German - One is the language you use with friends and family, the other the language you use in writing, in official functions and to communicate with “outsiders”. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-swiss-italians-come-to-speak-almost-standard-italian/602548/6 "2011-11-11T09:46:29Z")
For what it’s worth, the term you should be using is “Italian-speaking Swiss,” not “Swiss Italians”: > **[Swiss people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_people)** > > The Swiss people (German: die Schweizer, French: les Suisses, Italian: gli Svizzeri, Romansh: ils Svizzers) are the citizens of the multi-ethnic Swiss Confederation (Switzerland) regardless of ethno-cultural background\[b\] or people of self-identified Swiss ancestry. > The number of Swiss nationals has grown from 1.7 million in 1815 to 8.7 million in 2020. More than 1.5 million Swiss citizens hold multiple citizenship. About 11% of citizens live abroad (0.8 million, of whom 0.6 million hold multi... In English, when we talk about a dialect X of a language Y, we say, “X Y.” So we talk about “American English,” “Australian English,” “Canadian French,” “Brazilian Portuguese,” etc. When we talk about the people of country X who speak language Y, we say, “Y-speaking X” (or sometimes just “Y X”). So we talk about “French Canadians,” “German-speaking Swiss,” “Spanish-speaking Americans,” etc. Admittedly, this is complicated by the fact that the term in Italian for Italian-speaking Swiss is “Svizzeri Italiani,” but it is less confusing if you don’t translate that literally into “Swiss Italians.” The article in Wikipedia about Swiss Italian has some information about how it differs from standard Italian: > **[Swiss Italian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Italian)** > > The Italian language in the Italian Switzerland or Swiss Italian (Italian: italiano svizzero, pronounced \[itaˈljano ˈzvittsero\]) is the variety of the Italian language taught in the Italian-speaking area of Switzerland. While this variety is mainly spoken in the canton of Ticino and in the southern part of Grisons (about 270,000 native speakers), Italian is spoken natively in the whole country by about 700,000 people: Swiss Italians, Italian immigrants and Swiss citizens with Italian citizenship.... ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-swiss-italians-come-to-speak-almost-standard-italian/602548/7 "2011-11-11T09:57:12Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > … this is complicated by the fact that the term in Italian for Italian-speaking Swiss is “Svizzeri Italiani,” but it is less confusing if you don’t translate that literally into “Swiss Italians.” The literal translation would be “Italian Swiss” (plural). ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-swiss-italians-come-to-speak-almost-standard-italian/602548/8 "2011-11-11T10:01:08Z")
Thank you.