Swiss German: Expedition in an Unknown Language
What I learned reading my first German book
Back in January, I set a goal to read more books about Switzerland and at least one book in German. I recently accomplished both goals by finishing Schwiizerdütsch: Expedition in eine unbekannte Sprache (Swiss German: Expedition in an Unknown Language) by Marina Rumjanzewa.
Unlike the book on Swiss history I finished earlier this year, Marina Rumjanzewa taught me a lot about Switzerland and Swiss German. Rumjanzewa, originally from Russia, is a writer and filmmaker who studied German and moved to Zurich in 1990. In her book, she recalls theoretically understanding that the Swiss spoke Swiss German, but actually witnessing it confounded her. She’d lived in German cities, where she heard and understood what she calls “dialectal coloring,” variants of German that anyone who spoke German could understand.
“But in Switzerland, everyone everywhere spoke a proper dialect – farmers and professors alike, people in a bakery and journalists in a newspaper editorial office.” And Rumjanzewa did not understand them.
She made the effort to understand, though she writes that even 30 years later, she doesn’t speak Swiss German herself and can’t localize dialect by canton, except for Bern German. I’ve met Germans who have lived here for 20 years and can similarly understand Swiss German but don’t speak it. At least one German told me her kids make fun of her if she tries, which is, I believe, what kids are for: mocking their parents.
Localizing Swiss German, or being able to tell which canton they’re from based on their accent, is a skill perhaps only native Swiss have. I can’t do it. I can only tell whether or not someone comes from Basel, and I might be able to ID Zurich German.
Rumjanzewa introduced me to the term “diglossia”, “the coexistence of two varieties of the same language throughout a speech community, where each variety has different functions.1”
Now I know I’m diglossic2, as are all German-speaking Swiss.
When Rumjanzewa arrived in Switzerland, Swiss German’s function was as the spoken language, and Hochdeutsch, “high German” (aka, German), functioned as the written language. She rarely saw Swiss German in writing. Then in the 2000s, she and her friends realized that their children were all texting each other not only with abbreviations and emoji, but in Swiss German. She tried to forbid her daughter from doing so, because you write in German, and German has grammar and spelling rules that help your writing.
“It must be difficult to have to think about how to write something every time,” Rumjanzewa told her daughter.
“It’s not hard at all – it’s way easier [to write in Swiss German]!” the daughter replied. “In German, I always have to think about it, and so I can write however I please.” She laughed off her mother’s attempt to force her to reply to her friends in German only.
Swiss German has no standard spelling, which the editor in chief of the Schweizerisches Idiotikon confirmed for Rumjanzewa. I’ve experienced the discrepancies. I’m in a club Whatsapp group, and everyone spells things differently. For example, the German “Ich bin dabei”, or “I will be there” gets written as “Ich bi derby,” “Ych by derby,” and “Ich bi debi.” Sometimes “Ich” is just “I”. I saw these varieties, and Rumjanzewa’s book assured me that this is just how it is. For someone who feels shaky in her German, it’s freeing. We’re all spelling these Swiss German words however the spirit moves us.
Reading more than a few texts or social media captions in Swiss German is challenging. The most written Swiss German I encounter is at Fasnacht, when the clubs hand out Zeedel (Zettel, paper slips) with satirical poems written in dialect. Rumjanzewa writes that Germans ask her how we can understand each other with our rule-free spelling. She points out that German has only had standard orthography since 1902.
Languages are evolving all the time, and I loved reading about the cycles Swiss German has experienced. Rumjanzewa learned that in the late Middle Ages, German-speaking Switzerland did have a common written language, the “eidgenössische Landsprach,” or a federal state language. As printing spread, Swiss printers abandoned this for German to attract a wider audience. Until 2005, the weather report on Swiss television was given in German; now it’s in Swiss German. As Swiss German gets used in more media, people find a way to write it that’s accessible to the largest (Swiss) audience. And, of course, both spoken and written Swiss German are full of English words.
Rumjanzewa explored the Swiss German/German diglossia by asking the Swiss about their native languages: did they consider both Swiss German and German their native language? She found that most Swiss German speakers readily embraced Swiss German as their mother tongue, but hesitated on German.
“It’s only my native writing language;” “I’m less comfortable with it;” “No, it’s a language we only start in school.” They also said they don’t speak German as well as Germans.
All relatable (except for the part about learning German in school, which I did not).
I needed Rumjanzewa’s book to identify these changes, some of which I’ve lived through but wasn’t here to observe. I stopped visiting Switzerland regularly right around the time more written Swiss German would have taken off. My family and friends wrote letters and emails in German, and I’m only starting to make Swiss friends who occasionally text in dialect. I look forward to annoying them and my extended family with questions about if, and when, they write in Swiss German, and whether they consider German to be their native language.
This isn’t truly the first German book I’ve ever read. When I lived in Geneva, I read Mein Herz so Weiss (My Heart so White) by Javier Marías, not realizing it was translated from Spanish. I also read Otfried Preussler’s Die Kleine Hexe (The Little Witch), which is a children’s book. Schwiizerdütsch is, however, the first book I’ve read in German since moving back to Switzerland. For the three subscribers who read German and might be interested in learning about Swiss German, I can recommend this book.
How’s your 2025 reading going? Got any recommendations (in English or German)?
https://www.britannica.com/topic/diglossia
I keep getting “Gee, Officer Krupke” stuck in my head when I read this. “I’m disturbed!”
Can't wait to get utterly confused by Schwiizerdütsch in a few months!
I checked but don't really have any new German recommendations. I'm less and less interested in the classic literature. Some of them are of course quite good, but they tend to be really difficult and verbose. I'm not sure it's worth it. Otherwise I've just read things about music or gender, which is more fun for me and also generally easier.