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22 The Linguist Vol/55 No/6 2016 www.ciol.org.uk FEATURES Josephine Keller-Blagden takes us on a languages tour of the multilingual nation, and looks at the distinct cases of Swiss German and Romansh S ince the early Middle Ages, Switzerland's native population has been divided into four different cultures with four different languages in four different regions, separated from each other by natural borders, such as rivers and mountains. German is spoken in 17 of the 23 cantons in central, northern and eastern Switzerland. The five French-speaking cantons are in the west, and the canton of Ticino (Tessin in French and German) in the south is the sole Italian-speaking one. Of course there is some overlap. The cantons of Fribourg, Bern and Valais, in the west/south west, are officially bilingual (French and German). The large canton of Graubünden (Grisons in English) in the east is officially trilingual: German, Italian and Romansh are spoken there. So about 64% of the Swiss have German as their mother-tongue, 23% French, 8% Italian and 0.5% Romansh. All four languages are national languages. German, French and Italian are full official languages – all laws and official documents have to be available in them – and Romansh is a 'partial' official language for the purpose of communication with Romansh speakers. Then there are the immigrants. About 20% of the resident Swiss population are non-naturalised foreigners. So there are many other mother tongues, such as Serbo-Croat (1.5%), Albanian (1.3%), Portuguese (1.2%), Spanish (1.1%) and, of course, English (1%). In fact, these non-national languages combined now outnumber both Romansh and Italian as a speaker's main language. Naturally, some Swiss are bilingual, especially if they live in a canton where two languages are spoken, but the majority are not. Many speak at least two non-native languages fluently: a national one and English. Traditionally, the Swiss have to learn at least one other national language at school. The importance of the national language has, however, decreased in recent years in favour of English, with Zurich's Education Minister deciding in 2000, for example, that English would precede French as the first language learned in school in the canton of Zurich. English is spoken widely where there is business or tourism. So if you are in a hotel, travel by train or want to go shopping in Zurich, St Moritz or Geneva, you can get by easily with English; not so if you are shopping in a supermarket in Niederhasli, Otelfingen, Bubikon or Ticino, where a large portion of the workforce comes daily from Italy. Of the four national languages of Switzerland, French and Italian are sufficiently similar to the versions spoken in France and Italy for them to be easily understood by the French and Italians respectively. Swiss German and Romansh, on the other hand, are rather special. Swiss German Swiss German is very different from High or Standard German. For people from north Germany, at least, it is like a completely different language and when they first encounter it, most understand nothing. Those from further south are more likely to understand a little, as the local dialects there are more similar to Swiss German. Swiss German is purely a spoken dialect or idiom. It is the mother tongue of all Swiss Germans, but they write and read Standard German, also referred to as 'written German' by older Swiss. Children encounter Standard German, at the latest, when they go to school, where it is the language normally used for all lessons. Sometimes in kindergarten the stories are read in Standard Inside Switzerland German French Italian Romansh MAP OF LANGUAGE AREAS TSCHUBBY 'L ANGUAGES IN SWITZERLAND' 1/1/16 WIKIPEDIA (CC BY-SA 3.0)