# Why isn't Swiss German considered a different language? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 23, 2009, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670 "2009-11-23T18:41:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2009, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/21 "2009-11-23T21:39:02Z")
> [@footballisplayedwithyourfeet](#): > > Nice try, but except for the first you didn’t get the main points. > [@Svejk\_1](#): > > Darn - I see some of the other resident Dutch were faster. Anyway, thanks for taking up the challenge, that was fun 🙂 I think you did a good job on the whole on a word by word basis but except for the Berlusconi one you did not get close to understanding (maybe the one about the Turkish was close though). Yes, that was fun! But to my original point, I’m not a native speaker of German. It would still be interesting to see someone like that show up with their version of the translations. ---
**Author:** ![Saim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c57346/32.png) [@Saim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saim)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/22 "2011-03-19T08:46:14Z")
I think the difference between Dutch and the variety of Alemmanic spoken in Switzerland (“Swiss-German”) is one of national identity. The Dutch have a very strong national identity, which is a product of a war of independence against the Spanish and their subsequent transformation into a colonial power. Why would they want to be German-speakers when they spread their own language into places like South Africa (now often considered a distinct language), New England (now an extinct speech community) and Suriname (only really an administrative language, though)? Similarly, the Swiss Germans did adopt a non-German national identity. However, this one is a _Swiss_ one which isn’t tied to language, due to the large Francophone (historically Arpitan), Italian/Lombard and Romansh populations in the country. So to distinguish themselves from other Swiss they become “Swiss Germans”. Obviously there can’t be a Germanic “Swiss language” because of the number of Latin-descended languages in the area. I’m no historian, but that’s what I would think the reason would be. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/23 "2011-03-19T11:11:52Z")
Up until fairly recently Haitian Creole was not considered it’s own language but just a dialect of French. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/24 "2011-03-19T13:10:28Z")
What’s a language and what’s a dialect is a political, not linguistic, question. Essentially, Swiss lacks an orthography and so they are forced to write in High German, little as they like it. My Swiss friend tells me that when he is away, he has a great deal of trouble writing to his wife (they are both from Zurich) because to write in High German feels like a formal document, while he doesn’t know how to write in dialect (his word). I knew someone from Gruyere whose native language was called Gruyerien. It is actually one of the 75 or so languages in which the Lord’s Prayer is written in a church located on the hills outside Jerusalem. When he was a student in Fribourg, 30 km from Gruyere he had to speak standard French since no one in Fribourg could understand his language. He demonstrated it to me and, while my French is not good, I can understand it, but could make nothing of Gruyerien. Of course, there are dialects of English that I cannot understand at all. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/25 "2011-03-19T15:40:03Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Of course, there are dialects of English that I cannot understand at all. How come Mercan and English ain’t, you know, like different languages? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/26 "2011-03-19T20:07:45Z")
Does the German dialect in Germany blur into the dialect in Switzerland the way it does with Dutch in the Netherlands? ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/27 "2011-03-19T23:51:50Z")
> [@alfabex](#): > > So, why isn’t Swiss German also considered a separate language? It is unintelligible to someone who speaks standard German (I have seen movies in Swiss German with subtitles in standard German, not to mention German people telling me they can’t understand Swiss German) and they’re a separate country. I went to Switzerland last summer, and what standard German I could remember from school was pretty useful. My German language skills are limited enough that I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between what I couldn’t understand due to the different Swiss dialect(s) and what I couldn’t understand just because my German isn’t that good, but Swiss German didn’t seem like it would be completely unintelligible to someone who spoke standard “German German”. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/28 "2011-03-20T00:01:55Z")
Some of the Amish came from the German areas of Switzerland and of course Germany. > **[Amish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish)** > > This is an accepted version of this page > > The Amish (/ˈɑːmɪʃ/ ⓘ, also /ˈæmɪʃ/ or /ˈeɪmɪʃ/; Pennsylvania German: Amisch), formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss and Alsatian origins. As they maintain a degree of separation from surrounding populations, and hold their faith in common, the Amish have been described by certain scholars as an ethnoreligious group, combining features of an ethnicity and a Christian denomination. ... > [@](#): > > These followers were originally from three main places: the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, Alsace (now part of France), and the Palatinate of Germany. I wonder how well they’d understand people from those regions today? ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/29 "2011-03-20T12:31:18Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I went to Switzerland last summer, and what standard German I could remember from school was pretty useful. My German language skills are limited enough that I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between what I couldn’t understand due to the different Swiss dialect(s) and what I couldn’t understand just because my German isn’t that good, but Swiss German didn’t seem like it would be completely unintelligible to someone who spoke standard “German German”. It would be completely unintelligible. They weren’t speaking to you in Swiss, but in High German. My colleague who lived for the first 16 years of his life in Germany spent a year in Zurich nearly 50 years ago (about 25 years after he left Germany in 1939) and tells me that at the end of the year he was just beginning to understand it. I have the impression (I can’t be more positive because I don’t know for sure) that the southwestern German dialects do gradually shade into Swiss. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/30 "2011-03-20T14:00:06Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Does the German dialect in Germany blur into the dialect in Switzerland the way it does with Dutch in the Netherlands? Yers, although of course there are many different dialects of German. \*\*Saim \*\*already mentioned the relevant family of dialects in this case - Alemannic ([map](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alemannic-Dialects-Map-English.png)). ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/31 "2011-03-20T15:40:02Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > It would be completely unintelligible. They weren’t speaking to you in Swiss, but in High German. My colleague who lived for the first 16 years of his life in Germany spent a year in Zurich nearly 50 years ago (about 25 years after he left Germany in 1939) and tells me that at the end of the year he was just beginning to understand it. Counter-example: On a 10-day trip to Lake Constance last year, I listened to a lot of Swiss German radio while driving around, and found I could understand it reasonably well. I accept that the “standard” Swiss German spoken on the radio may be easier to understand than some other dialects. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/32 "2011-03-20T15:46:30Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > It would be completely unintelligible. They weren’t speaking to you in Swiss, but in High German. Anyone who could actually switched to English as soon as I said anything. The spoken German I was hearing in Switzerland was mostly from either people who weren’t talking to me or people who were addressing me without yet realizing I was a foreigner. There was a lot that I didn’t understand, but it was recognizably German and I could catch at least some of it. This was very different from my experience in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. I’m told that Swiss French is pretty similar to standard “French French”, but I never studied French at all and really couldn’t understand a thing anyone said to me in French. So it’s not like I don’t know what it’s like to be surrounded by people speaking a completely unintelligible language. Swiss French was completely unintelligible to me (beyond the few basic words almost anyone would know, like “merci”), but Swiss German was not. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2011, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670/33 "2011-03-21T20:19:24Z")
> [@Palo\_Verde](#): > > The famous quote about how what the difference is between a language and a dialect: “A language is a dialect with an army.” Actually its “A language is a dialect with an army [and a navy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy).” Which is presumably where Swiss German falls short. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-isnt-swiss-german-considered-a-different-language/518670.md?page=1)