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Linguistic geography of Switzerland
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The linguistic geography of Switzerland is in the main tripartite, with the Swiss German region (Deutschschweiz) in the northeast, the Swiss French part (Romandie) in the west and the Swiss Italian area (Svizzera Italiana) in the south. There remains a small Romansh speaking native population in Grischun.
The four official languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian and Romansh. Native speakers number about 64 percent (4.6 million) for German (mostly Swiss German dialects), 20 percent (1.5 million) for French (mostly Swiss French, but including some Arpitan dialects), 6.5 percent (0.5 million) for Italian (mostly Swiss Italian, but including Lombardic dialects), and less than 0.5 percent (35,000) for Romansh.
The Cantons of Fribourg, Berne and Valais are officially bilingual; Grisons is trilingual.
le class="prettytable"> | | year | German | French | Italian | Romansh | other |
|---|
| 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 |
German
The German speaking part of Switzerland ( ) comprises about 65 percent of Switzerland (North Western Switzerland, Eastern Switzerland, Central Switzerland, most of the Swiss plateau and the greater part of the Swiss Alps).
In most Swiss cantons, German is the only official language (Aargau, Appenzell, Basel, Glarus, Lucerne, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Schaffhausen, Schwyz, Solothurn, St. Gallen, Thurgau, Uri, Zug, Zurich).
In the cantons of Bern, Fribourg and Valais, French is co-official; in the canton of Graubünden, more than half of the population speaks German, while the rest speak Romansh and Italian.
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Encyclopedia
The linguistic geography of Switzerland is in the main tripartite, with the Swiss German region (Deutschschweiz) in the northeast, the Swiss French part (Romandie) in the west and the Swiss Italian area (Svizzera Italiana) in the south. There remains a small Romansh speaking native population in Grischun.
The four official languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian and Romansh. Native speakers number about 64 percent (4.6 million) for German (mostly Swiss German dialects), 20 percent (1.5 million) for French (mostly Swiss French, but including some Arpitan dialects), 6.5 percent (0.5 million) for Italian (mostly Swiss Italian, but including Lombardic dialects), and less than 0.5 percent (35,000) for Romansh.
The Cantons of Fribourg, Berne and Valais are officially bilingual; Grisons is trilingual.
History
Linguistic demographics, 1950-2000, according to census data:
| year | German | French | Italian | Romansh | other |
|---|
| 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 |
German
The German speaking part of Switzerland ( ) comprises about 65 percent of Switzerland (North Western Switzerland, Eastern Switzerland, Central Switzerland, most of the Swiss plateau and the greater part of the Swiss Alps).
In most Swiss cantons, German is the only official language (Aargau, Appenzell, Basel, Glarus, Lucerne, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Schaffhausen, Schwyz, Solothurn, St. Gallen, Thurgau, Uri, Zug, Zurich).
In the cantons of Bern, Fribourg and Valais, French is co-official; in the canton of Graubünden, more than half of the population speaks German, while the rest speak Romansh and 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 la Romandie, the German-speaking Swiss used to refer to (and, colloquially, still do) the French-speaking Swiss as "Welsche" and to their area as Welschland, which has the same etymology as the English Welsh. In Germany Welsch and Welschland refer to Italy; there, the term is antiquated, rarely used, and somewhat disparaging.
The German-speaking Swiss do not feel very close to their German neighbours in the north (or Austrian neighbours to the east) even though, in the case of Germany, the Alemannic dialects on both sides of the Rhine are similar. The reasons for this are mainly historical, as the German part of Switzerland has effectively been culturally and politically separated from the rest of the German-speaking areas since the late Middle Ages and officially since the Peace of Westphalia. Another factor is the status of the dialect. Standard German is the official language and is used in writing and to a great part by the media, but the spoken language in Switzerland in all social classes is almost exclusively one of the Swiss German dialects. In Germany, people with higher education seldom speak a marked dialect.
The German-speaking Swiss do not feel as a uniform group: the average German speaking Swiss feels foremost belonging to Solothurn, St. Gallen, or Uri and sees himself not speaking Swiss German but the Baseldytsch (dialect of Basel), Bärndütsch (dialect of Bern) or Züridütsch (dialect of Zurich). The marked subsidiarity of the Swiss federalism where many political decisions are taken at municipal or cantonal level supports this attitude.
By the Middle Ages there had developed a marked difference between the rural cantons of the German-speaking part of Switzerland and the city cantons, 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, where all cantons are somewhat denominationally mixed, the different historical denominations can be seen in the mountain villages, where the 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.
French
Romandy () 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 Berne, Valais, and Fribourg. About 1.5 million people (or 20 percent of the Swiss population) live in Romandy.
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 many 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 much of Romandy, speakers use huitante (eighty) instead of the standard French "quatre-vingt" (four-twenty) and "sou" for a 5-centime coin.
Historically, the vernacular language used by inhabitants of most parts of Romandy was Francoprovençal. Francoprovençal (also called Arpitan) is a French variant sometimes considered halfway between Standard French (langue d'oïl, originally spoken in northern France) and Provençal (langue d'oc, spoken in southern France). Standard French and Francoprovençal/Arpetan, linguistically, are distinct and mutual intelligibility is limited. Increasingly, Francoprovençal/Arpetan is used only by members of the older generations.
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 on October 2.
Italian
Italian Switzerland ( ) is the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, which has the Canton of Ticino and the valleys of Mesolcina, Calanca, Bregaglia and Poschiavo in Grigioni.
The linguistic region covers an area approximately 3,500 km² and has a total population of around 350,000 inhabitants, with the number of Italophones residing in Switzerland being 470,000.
According to statistics, the percentage of Italian-speaking Swiss has been rapidly decreasing since the 1970s, after reaching an all-time record of 12 percent of the population during the same decade; however this is entirely because of the reduced number of immigrants from Italy in the country: the percentage of native Italian-speaking Swiss has been steady at 4 percent since the 1950s.
The most important towns in Italian Switzerland are:
In 1996 the region established its first university, the Università della Svizzera italiana, which is based in Lugano and Mendrisio. The region's international airport is located in Agno.
Romansh
On the cantonal level, Romansh is an official language only in the trilingual canton of Graubünden, where the municipalities in turn are free to specify their own official languages.
Significant communities of Romansh speakers remain in the Surselva, the Oberhalbstein valley, the lower Engadin and the Val Müstair.
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 Romansh idiom for correspondence with the federal government and expect to receive a Romansh response in Romansh Grischun, because the federal authorities use the standardized idiom exclusively.
Immigrant languages
The non-official language with the largest group of native speakers is Serbo-Croatian with 103,000 speakers in 2000, followed by Albanian with 95,000, Portuguese with 89,500, Spanish with 77,500, English with 73,000, Turkish 44,500, and a total of 173,000 speakers of other languages, amounting to roughly 10 percent of the population with a native language not among the four official languages.
See also
External links
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