Languages of Switzerland

The four national languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian and Romansh.[3] German, French and Italian maintain equal status as official languages at the national level within the Federal Administration of the Swiss Confederation, while Romansh is used in dealings with people who speak it.[4] In some situations, Latin is used, particularly as a single language to denote the country.

Languages of Switzerland
Official	German, French, Italian, Romansh
National	German 62.6%   French 22.9%   Italian 8.2%   Romansh 0.5%
Vernacular	Swiss German, Swiss Standard German, Swiss French, Swiss Italian, Franco-Provençal, Lombard, Walser German
Immigrant	English 5.4% Portuguese 3.7% Albanian 3.2% Serbo-Croatian 2.5% Spanish 2.4% others 7.7%
Signed	Swiss German Sign Language, French Sign Language, Italian Sign Language[1]
Keyboard layout	QWERTZ
Source	FSO[2]

In 2017, the population of Switzerland was 62.6% native speakers of German (58.5% speak Swiss German, and 11.1% Standard German at home); 22.9% French (mostly Swiss French, but including some Franco-Provençal dialects); 8.2% Italian (mostly Swiss Italian, but including Lombard dialects); and 0.5% Romansh.[5] The German region (Deutschschweiz) is roughly in the east, north and center; the French part (la Romandie) in the west and the Italian area (Svizzera italiana) in the south. There remains a small Romansh-speaking native population in Graubünden in the east. The cantons of Fribourg, Bern and Valais are officially bilingual; the canton of Graubünden is officially trilingual.

History

The main languages of Swiss residents from 1950 to 2015, in percentages, were as follows:[6]

Year	German	French	Italian	Romansh	Other
2015	63.0	22.7	8.4	0.6	5.3
2000	63.7	20.4	6.5	0.5	9.0
1990	63.6	19.2	7.6	0.6	8.9
1980	65.0	18.4	9.8	0.8	6.0
1970	64.9	18.1	11.9	0.8	4.3
1960	69.4	18.9	9.5	0.9	1.4
1950	72.1	20.3	5.9	1.0	0.7

In 2012, for the first time, respondents could indicate more than one language, causing the percentages to exceed 100%.[6]

National languages and linguistic regions

German

Distribution of High Alemannic dialects. Marked in red is the Brünig-Napf-Reuss line.

Distribution of Highest Alemannic dialects.

The German-speaking part of Switzerland (German: Deutschschweiz, French: Suisse alémanique, Italian: Svizzera tedesca, Romansh: Svizra tudestga) constitutes about 65% of Switzerland (North Western Switzerland, Eastern Switzerland, Central Switzerland, most of the Swiss Plateau and the greater part of the Swiss Alps).

In seventeen of the Swiss cantons, German is the only official language (Aargau, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Appenzell Innerrhoden, Basel-Stadt, Basel-Landschaft, Glarus, Luzern, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Schaffhausen, Schwyz, Solothurn, St. Gallen, Thurgau, Uri, Zug, and Zürich).[7]

In the cantons of Bern, Fribourg and Valais, French is co-official; in the trilingual canton of Graubünden, more than half of the population speaks German, while the rest speak Romansh or Italian. In each case, all languages are official languages of the respective canton.

While the French-speaking Swiss prefer to call themselves Romands and their part of the country is the Romandy, the German-speaking Swiss used to (and, colloquially, still do) refer to the French-speaking Swiss as "Welsche", and to their area as Welschland, which has the same etymology as the English Welsh (see Walha). In Germany Welsch and Welschland refer to Italy; there, the term is antiquated, rarely used, and somewhat disparaging. Research shows, that individuals with a French-sounding name in the German-speaking part suffer from social discrimination. [8] [9]

Nevertheless, in 2017, 11.1%, or about 920,600 of the Swiss residents speak Standard German ("Hochdeutsch") at home, but this statistic is probably mainly due to German (and Austrian) immigrants.[10]

By the Middle Ages, a marked difference had developed within the German-speaking part of Switzerland between the rural cantons (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Glarus, Zug, Appenzell, Schaffhausen) and the city cantons (Lucerne, Berne, Zurich, Solothurn, Fribourg, Basel, St. Gallen), divided by views about trade and commerce. After the Reformation, all cantons were either Catholic or Protestant, and the denominational influences on culture added to the differences. Even today, when all cantons are somewhat denominationally mixed, the different historical denominations can be seen in the mountain villages, where Roman Catholic Central Switzerland abounds with chapels and statues of saints, and the farm houses in the very similar landscape of the Protestant Bernese Oberland show Bible verses carved on the housefronts instead.

In addition to this more widespread notion of Swiss German dialect, there is also Walser German, another Highest Alemannic speech brought by Walser emigrants from Valais.

French

Arpitan language area map with place names in arpitan and historic political divisions.

Romandy (French: Romandie, la Suisse romande, German: Romandie, Welschland, Welschschweiz, or in some contexts: Westschweiz,[note 1] Italian: Svizzera romanda) is the French-speaking part of Switzerland. It covers the area of the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel, and Jura as well as the French-speaking parts of the cantons of Bern (German-speaking majority), Valais (French-speaking majority), and Fribourg (French-speaking majority). 1.9 million people (or 24.4% of the Swiss population) live in Romandy.[11]

Standard Swiss French and the French of France are the same language, with some differences. For example, like some other regions of the French-speaking world, Swiss people (as well as most Francophone Belgians) use septante (seventy) instead of soixante-dix (literally, "sixty ten") and nonante (ninety) instead of "quatre-vingt-dix" ("four twenties and ten"). In the cantons of Vaud, Valais and Fribourg, speakers use huitante (eighty) instead of the Standard French "quatre-vingts" (four twenties).[12] "Sou" is used throughout Romandy for a 5-centime coin, as is "tune" (or "thune") when referring to a 5-Swiss-franc piece.

Historically, the vernacular language used by inhabitants of most parts of Romandy was Franco-Provençal. Franco-Provençal (also called Arpitan) is a language sometimes considered to be halfway between the langue d'oïl (the historical language of northern France and ancestor of French) and Occitan (the langue d'oc, spoken in southern France). Standard French and Franco-Provençal/Arpitan, linguistically, are distinct and mutual intelligibility is limited. Increasingly, Franco-Provençal/Arpitan is used only by members of the older generations. In parts of Jura Franc-Comtois dialects are also spoken; these belong to the same Oïl bloc as Standard French.

The term Romandy does not formally exist in the political system, but is used to distinguish and unify the French-speaking population of Switzerland. The television channel Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR) serves the Romande community across Switzerland, is syndicated to TV5 and CanalSat Romande.

Italian

A map showing the Italian-speaking areas of Switzerland: darker areas indicate where Italian is most prominent

Italian Switzerland (Italian: Svizzera italiana, Romansh: Svizra taliana, French: Suisse italienne, German: italienische Schweiz) is the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, which includes the canton of Ticino and the southern part of Grisons. Italian is also spoken in the Gondo Valley (leading to the Simplon Pass, on the southern part of the watershed) in Valais. The traditional vernacular of this region is the Lombard language, specifically its Ticinese dialect.

The linguistic region covers an area approximately 3,500 km² and has a total population of around 350,000 inhabitants,[13] with the number of Italophones residing in Switzerland being 545,274 (about 7% of the Swiss population).[14]

The proportion of Italian-speaking inhabitants had been decreasing since the 1970s, after reaching a high of 12% of the population during the same decade. This was entirely because of the reduced number of immigrants from Italy to Switzerland, but gained again during the last decade.[6]

Romansh

Languages of instruction in the traditionally Romansh-speaking areas of Grisons as of 2003

  Romansh school

  Bilingual Romansh-German school

  German school, Romansh as a subject

  German schooling only

Romansh is an official language in the trilingual Canton of Grisons, where the municipalities in turn are free to specify their own official languages. Romansh has been recognized as one of four "national languages" by the Swiss Federal Constitution since 1938. It was also declared an "official language" of the Confederation in 1996, meaning that Romansh speakers may use their language for correspondence with the federal government and expect to receive a Romansh response. Although Romansh is split into several dialects, the federal and cantonal authorities use the standardized version (Romansh Grischun) exclusively.

Romansh speakers remain predominant in the Surselva, the Albula Region, and the Engiadina Bassa/Val Müstair Region.

Other languages

Besides the national languages and the many varieties of Swiss German, several regional Romance languages are spoken natively in Switzerland: Franco-Provençal and Lombard. About 20,000 Romani speak Sinte, an Indic language. Five sign languages are used: Swiss-German, French, Italian, Austrian,[15] and German.[15]

Mother/main language in Switzerland

Language	2000[16] Mother tongue		2015[17] Main language		2018[18]
	Number	%	Number	%	Number	%
German	4,639,762	63.7%	4,424,150	64%	4,458,156	62.9%
French	1,484,411	20.4%	1,567,197	22.7%	1,619,708	22.9%
Italian	470,961	6.5%	581,381	8.4%	593,646	8.4%
Romansch	35,072	0.5%	40,299	0.6%	36,709	0.5%
English	73,422	1%	374,642	5.4%	471,056	5.9%
Portuguese	89,527	1.2%	256,560	3.7%
Albanian	94,937	1.3%	188,125	2.7%
Serbo-Croatian	103,350	1.4%	161,882	2.3%
Spanish	76,750	1.1%	159,859	2.3%
Turkish	44,523	0.6%	78,015	1.1%
Arabic	14,345	0.2%	36,857	0.5%
Russian	8,570	0.1%	32,244	0.5%
Tamil	21,816	0.3%	31,145	0.5%
Polish	5,206	0.1%	24,881	0.4%
Dutch	11,840	0.2%	22,357	0.3%
Hungarian	6,194	0.1%	20,597	0.3%
Kurdish	7,531	0.1%	19,401	0.3%
Thai	7,569	0.1%	14,528	0.2%
Greek	4,792	0.1%	13,763	0.2%
Czech	5,444	0.1%	13,433	0.2%
Romanian	3,397	0%	12,738	0.2%
Chinese	8,279	0.1%	12,324	0.2%
Slovak	2,018	0%	12,072	0.2%
Persian	3,467	0%	11,108	0.2%
Macedonian	6,415	0.1%	10,698	0.2%
Swedish	5,560	0.1%	8,771	0.1%
Vietnamese	4,226	0.1%	6,720	0.1%
Tagalog	3,019	0%	6,275	0.1%
Japanese	4,100	0.1%	6,001	0.1%
Danish	2,739	0%	5,272	0.1%
Tibetan	1,108	0%	5,219	0.1%
Bulgarian	1,579	0%	4,583	0.1%
Finnish	2,628	0%	4,299	0.1%
Hindi-Urdu	1,407	0%	3,846	0.1%
Slovene	1,601	0%	3,690	0.1%
Somali	2,661	0%	3,607	0.1%
Aramaic	1,333	0%	2,465	0%
Hebrew	1,176	0%	2,159	0%
Norwegian	1,361	0%	2,108	0%
Korean	1,202	0%	1,816	0%
Other languages			77,751	1.1%	1,255,656	17.7%

Neo-Latin

A Swiss five-franc coin with the Latin inscription Confoederatio Helvetica.

The Federal Palace of Switzerland, with the Latin inscription Curia Confoederationis Helveticae.

To avoid having to translate the name of Switzerland in the four national languages,[note 2] Latin is used on the coins of the Swiss franc (Helvetia or Confoederatio Helvetica) and on Swiss stamps (Helvetia). The country code top-level domain for Switzerland on the internet is .ch, the abbreviation of the Latin name, Confoederatio Helvetica (Swiss Confederation); similarly, the International vehicle registration code for Swiss automobiles is "CH". The Federal Palace of Switzerland bears the inscription Curia Confoederationis Helveticae.[19]

To have a unique name across the country (without favoring German or English), several Swiss foundations and associations have Latin names, such as Pro Helvetia, Pro Infirmis, Pro Juventute, Pro Natura, Pro Patria, Pro Senectute, Pro Specie Rara, etc.

See also

• Swiss people
• Demographics of Switzerland
• Röstigraben, referring to the asserted difference in mentality between German Swiss and the French-speaking Romands
• Swiss literature
• List of multilingual countries and regions

Notes

1. "Welsch" is an old German word for "Foreign" and is the same word the Anglo-Saxons used for the original British inhabitants which today are the Welsh people.
2. When there is no room to use the four official languages, unlike on the banknotes of the Swiss franc, on the logo of the Federal administration of Switzerland and on the Swiss passport.

References

1. Archived 10 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine
2. "Sprachen 2015" (in German, French, and Italian). Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Federal Statistical Office FSO. 31 January 2017. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
3. "SR 101 The Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation of 18 April 1999 (Status as of 12 February 2017): Art. 4 National languages". The portal of the Swiss government (Federal Law collection). Berne, Switzerland: The Federal Council. 12 February 2017. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
4. "SR 441.1 Bundesgesetz über die Landessprachen und die Verständigung zwischen den Sprachgemeinschaften [Federal Act on the National Languages and Understanding between the Linguistic Communities] (Sprachengesetz, SpG) vom 5. Oktober 2007 (Stand am 1. Januar 2017): Art. 5 Amtssprachen". The portal of the Swiss government (Federal Law collection) (in German, French, Italian, and Romansh). Berne, Switzerland: The Federal Council. 1 January 2017. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
5. Statistik, Bundesamt für (21 February 2019). "Die zehn häufigsten Hauptsprachen der ständigen Wohnbevölkerung - 2014-2017 | Tabelle". Bundesamt für Statistik (in German). Retrieved 21 February 2019.
6. "Die zehn häufigsten Hauptsprachen der ständigen Wohnbevölkerung" (official website) (in German, French, and Italian). Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Swiss Federal Statistical Office FSO. 28 February 2018. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
7. "SR 101 The Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation of 18 April 1999 (Status as of 12 February 2017): Art. 1: The Swiss Confederation". The portal of the Swiss government (Federal Law collection). Berne, Switzerland: The Federal Council. 12 February 2017. Retrieved 13 June 2017.
8. Nesseler, Cornel; Carlos, Gomez-Gonzalez; Dietl, Helmut (2019). "What's in a name? Measuring access to social activities with a field experiment". Palgrave Communications. 5: 1–7. doi:10.1057/s41599-019-0372-0.
9. Dietl, Helmut; Carlos, Gomez-Gonzalez; Moretti, Paolo; Nesseler, Cornel (2020). "Does persistence pay off? Accessing social activities with a foreign-sounding name". Applied Economic Letters: 1–5. doi:10.1080/13504851.2020.1784381.
10. Statistik, Bundesamt für (29 January 2019). "Ständige Wohnbevölkerung ab 15 Jahren nach zuhause gesprochenen Sprachen - 2017 | Tabelle". Bundesamt für Statistik (in German). Retrieved 21 February 2019.
11. "Bilan de la population résidante permanente (total) selon les districts et les communes". Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Swiss Federal Statistical Office. 2 January 2015. Archived from the original (XLS) on 6 August 2011. Retrieved 24 October 2015.
12. Dominique Didier. "Septante, octante ou huitante, nonante". Monsu.desiderio.free.fr. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
13. (in French) Bilan de la population résidante permanente selon les cantons Archived 20 September 2009 at the Wayback Machine; calculated adding up the inhabitants in Ticino and 11% of the inhabitants of Grigioni, Swiss Federal Statistical Office
14. "Bevölkerung, Strukturerhebung der eidgenössischen Volkszählung 2011: Bevölkerung nach Sprache und Religion, Ständige Wohnbevölkerung ab 15 Jahren nach zuhause gesprochenen Sprachen, 2011" (Statistics) (in German, French, and Italian). Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Swiss Federal Statistical Office. 30 May 2013. Archived from the original (XLS) on 14 November 2013. Retrieved 22 December 2013.
15. Wittmann, Henri (1991). "Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement" (PDF). Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 10:1.215–88. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
16. "Tableau 7: Population résidante selon la langue principale avec au moins 600 locuteurs, en nombres absolus, en 2000". Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Swiss Federal Statistical Office. according to the 2000 census (over 1,000 speakers) Missing or empty |url= (help)
17. "Population résidante permanente de 15 ans et plus, selon les langues principales1), en 2015" (XLS) (in French). Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Federal Statistical Office - FSO. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
18. "Population résidante permanente de 15 ans et plus, selon les langues principales - 2018" (XLS) (in French). Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Federal Statistical Office - FSO. 29 January 2020. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
19. Tschentscher, Axel (14 September 2019). "File:Bern Parliament Pediment Inscription 2019-09-14 00-09.jpg". commons.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 22 March 2020.

External links

• Swiss German
• A quick guide to the Swiss German language
• Characteristics of Swiss German dialects
• swiss-linguistics.com Information portal on current linguistic research in Switzerland
• sieps.ch Information Services on Swiss Private Schools and Universities
• Pimsleur Swiss German Pimsleur Swiss German Course