Switzerland’s Languages

It doesn’t take a linguist to realise that Switzerland is different from many countries when it comes to its languages. After a tour of Switzerland where the language changed from city to city. From Zermatt, to Lucerne, Davos and Lugano, the tones of language change from the Germanic to Romance. I became particularly interested in how this multilingualism works, and exactly how stable it is. We know that languages do not remain static, and language styles and choices change very quickly. So I started to do some research – and very fascinating it was. There are four main languages spoken in Switzerland – we all know this, but what I was unprepared for was how uneven they are. German is the most widely spoken with 17 of the 26 cantons monolingual in German (63.7%); French is spoken in the west – four cantons are French speaking (Geneva, Jura, Neuchatel and Vaud) (20.4%). Three cantons are bilingual – Bern, Fribourg and Valais where both French and German are spoken. Italian is spoken in Ticino and four valleys of Canton Graubünden (6.5%). Whilst Rumantsch is spoken only in Graubünden, which is trilingual and the two other languages are German and Italian. It is a Latin language like French and Italian and spoken by only 0.55 of the population. There are many resident foreigners in Switzerland and have imported their own languages. It appears that Serbo-Croatian speakers were the largest foreign language group followed by English at 1%.

Having worked with bilinguals in another context I know that the acquisition of languages is about education, power and influence as well as identity. Minorities in a country rarely can manage with just their own language without exclusion and disadvantage. This appears to be so in Switzerland. The 35,000 mother tongue Rumantsch speakers all speak German too – they have to because they are a small group within a German-speaking area. Mother tongue Italian speaking Swiss also have the same problem – Italian speakers almost certainly have to learn German if they want to make it economically. For example, it appears that the administration in federal offices is almost entirely done in German, so that German speakers will be most likely to be employed, whatever the rules say.

Internal communications, say at business meetings or conferences, says the information I found, everybody speaks in their own language and it is assumed that they all understand each other – Italian or Rumantsch speakers will speak French or German, though it appears that increasingly everybody speaks English.

We often assume that having four languages in Switzerland means Swiss people speak at least the top three languages, but this, it seems, is a long way from the reality. My research suggests that although Swiss peoples understand each other’s languages pretty well, what is now happening is that proficiency in national languages is decreasing at the same time that English gains in popularity. Trilingual Switzerland is more likely going to be 2.5 lingual Switzerland with most people able to speak their mother tongue, English and understand another national language well enough to get by. I do wonder what European linguists predict will happen to Swiss languages in another century or so. If you want to go to Switzerland and practice any one of the three Swiss Languages why not look for a hotel in Switzerland ?