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Swiss-French and Swiss-Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Sprachgenie Decaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5709 days ago 128 posts - 165 votes  Speaks: German*, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Faroese, Icelandic, Flemish, Persian, Swiss-German Studies: English, Belarusian | Message 1 of 6 08 July 2009 at 1:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I used to live in Switzerland and it took me a long time to adjust to the German that is spoken there, even though German is my native language. Swiss-German is clearly different enough from High German that it deserves to be considered a different language.
I was wondering if this is the case with Swiss-French and Swiss-Italian. Are they also different enough from the standard forms that they can be considered their own languages? Does anyone know about this? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iwwersetzerin Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Luxembourg Joined 5669 days ago 259 posts - 513 votes Speaks: French*, Luxembourgish*, GermanC2, EnglishC2, SpanishC2, DutchC1, ItalianC1 Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 6 08 July 2009 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi Sprachgenie,
I used to study in Geneva and Swiss-French can definitely not be considered a language on its own. Only a very small part of the vocabulary varies and you get used to it very quickly. The accent is slightly different from standard French, but absolutely no impediment to understanding people. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Caveben Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5665 days ago 40 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Romanian, Slovenian | Message 3 of 6 13 July 2009 at 6:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I cannot claim to be an expert on the subject but I have been listening to radio stations from different Francophone countries and I would say that I have no more difficulty in understanding Swiss French than that of France. There appear to be some minor lexicographical differences but as with Quebec French they rarely present a major barrier to comprehension. Incidentally as a point of reference, Swiss French sounds more French to my ear than Quebec French.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 6 13 July 2009 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Swiss-German is the odd language out - it really is quite different from standard German.
Swiss French and Swiss Italian have some peculiarities of accent and vocabulary, but are much closer to "standard". There are also minor grammatical differences - Swiss Italian uses the subjunctive a little less than standard Italian as spoken in Italy, for example. The situation with Italian in particular is that there are a lot of dialects (which can be mutually incomprehensible), but that most people at this point speak standard Italian, and quite a lot don't speak dialects at this point. This isn't specific to Swiss Italian, by the way - I'm speaking of everywhere Italian is spoken. In Switzerland in particular, most young adults I know who natively speak Italian can understand, but not speak, a regional dialect; people over 40-50 often speak a dialect natively, though can switch into standard Italian at the drop of a hat. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 5 of 6 14 July 2009 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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The French I heard spoken in Geneva once seemed to be little different from the French of Paris. The Swiss accent is a little distinctive, and like French as spoken in Belgium, there are items of vocabulary that are different. But there seems to be nothing like the large gulf between Swiss German and the standard German language.
The film Three Colours Red might give an indication. That is set in Geneva but the film's French, to me anyway, differs little from the French of France. Irène Jacob, who plays one of the main characters, was described in a magazine as speaking with a slight Swiss accent (she was largely brought up in Switzerland, though born in France). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6122 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 6 of 6 14 July 2009 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | ||
That’s a nifty turn of phrase and sums it up nicely. Swiss-German is very different than Standard German while Swiss-French and Swiss-Italian are very similar to Standard French and Italian. The main differences are in vocabulary with Swiss-French having a bit of influence from German and Swiss-Italian having a bit of influence from both French and German. Also Swiss-French replaces the absurd and confusing soixante-dix (70), quatre-vingt (80) and quatre-vingt-dix (90) with the much more logical septante, huitante, and nonante. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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