We use the following abbreviations and coloring schema to identify the languages:
EN for English DE for German FR for French IT for Italian RO for Romansh
At the borders where two languages meet, the language does not change abruptly, it rather changes gradually. People living on the border usually grow up bilingual - this is especially true for the areas marked with strips on the map above. At school, the children have to learn a second language spoken in our country (however, there is currently a big dispute going on, whether our kids should learn English rather than German or French as a second language).
The border between the German and the French speaking part of our country is known as the "Röstigraben" (literally translated: "hashed potatoes ditch"). It stands not only for the separation of the languages, but also for the separation of the cultures and the ideologies. The lingual minorities sometimes feel out-ruled by the majority of the German speaking fellow citizen in political issues. While the French speaking Swiss tend to be more open minded, the German speaking Swiss tend to be more conservative. Again, this is a very general statement, a single individuum should not be judged simply by her or his language or origin.
The term "German speaking Swiss" is not really correct, they actually speak Swiss-German ("Schweizerdeutsch"). Swiss-German is very different form the German spoken in Germany or Austria. Even more surprisingly, there is no written Swiss-German at all. People in Austria, Germany and Switzerland share the same written German language, known as "high German" ("Hochdeutsch") - however, the term "written German" ("Deutsche Schriftsprache") is far more accurate. The written German is very different form the Swiss-German, it is almost a foreign language.
People in each canton have their own, very distinct dialect, which varies significantly. Again, the language changes gradually from north to south and from east to west. Even though the French and the Italian spoken in Switzerland are not absolutely the same as in the neighboring countries, they are not as different as the Swiss-German from the German-German or the Austrian-German.
Romansh is a very different and also a very old language, struggling to survive. Even if there are only a few villages where they still speak this language, there are nonetheless five different dialects (known as idioms) around. The words in the table below are provided in Romansh Sursilvan, the other idioms are known as Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Puter and Vallader. See Lia Rumantscha for much more information about Romansh.
Note: The tables below show a number of words and simple common phrases in English and their translations in all four official Swiss languages. While the author took every effort to find the correct words or expressions, there is no guarantee for correctness. In addition, the same word may have different meanings depending on the context or region. The author tried to choose common words and phrases a visitor may need, but this document shall not replace a dictionary at all.
If you come across a document on the Web which you cannot understand because it is written in a foreign language, you may try babelfish to translate it - however, my experience is, that the output is hardly useful. On-line translation is still far away from what it needs be ...
Acknowledgments: The author wants to thank all his friends for their kind and valued help to create this document, most of all Theodor Casutt from the ETH Zürich for his tremendous efforts to provide the Romansh translation. However, the responsibility for all errors is solely by the author mentioned at the bottom of this document. Please use this form to send suggestions for corrections or additions.