Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 July 18

= July 18 =

Swiss Standard German pronunciation
Is Swiss Standard German (NOT Swiss German) pronounced more or less the same as Hochdeutsch in Germany? Are there any notable or interesting differences? I ask because there's no phonology section in our article. Lfh (talk) 09:43, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Our article on Helvetism may be of help until user:Sluzzelin comes around. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 10:46, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * As the article Helvetism and its section on Pronunciation correctly convey, Swiss Germans have a very recognizable accent when speaking Standard German. I'm not good at recognizing accents, but I can identify a Swiss German after a few seconds of hearing him speak. Rimush (talk) 11:03, 18 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Rimush is correct, though it has to be pointed out that there is a gradient of more or less Swiss-sounding spoken Standard German. Basically the phonology follows that of the individual speaker's native Swiss German dialect. So the spoken Swiss Standard German will retain some of the characteristics mentioned under Swiss_German. The phonology varies among dialects, and it is often possible to guess the speaker's particular dialect (Bernese German, Basel German, etc.) from hearing their spoken Standard German. At school we were taught to lose the distinct Helvetic (and, to many ears, ugly) voiceless velar and uvular plosives (the "k" and "ch"), but other aspects, such as non-aspirated [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] prevail with most speakers. As I said, there is a gradient. There are people who even use the "horrible" "k" and "ch" when speaking Standard German, while, at the other extreme, there are those who try to imitate German speakers, often with mixed success. Most are somewhere in between, distinctly Swiss-sounding, as observed by Rimush, but without the "Stallgeruch" ("barn smell") cultivated by some populist politicans, who want to sound as Swiss as possible in defiance of anything non-Swiss, also in defiance of anything that has to do with education . Katja Stauber, a Swiss television news anchor who grew up speaking German Standard German with her parents, originally read the news with a very German sounding pronunciation, but, because of critical comments in the media, de-germanized her speech and started ending her presentation with "uf Widerluege" (Swiss German for "auf Wiedersehen", "good bye")
 * Another, perhaps the most important, give-away is the Swiss prosody and melody of speech. Put simply, we speak in trochaic verse. An American friend said it all sounds like "YUffen DOOffen DUffen" (spelled "JAffen DUffen DAffen", in German, meaning nothing in either language).
 * You often hear German comedians (official and self-proclaimed) speaking Standard German sentences with their impression of Swiss phonology and prosody, pretending they are speaking Swiss German. I remember Harald Juhnke doing this, and it was doubly hilarious. The only American actor I have ever heard do an accurate impression of a Swiss German accent in English is Robin Williams. Often, when a film shows a Swiss character (such as a banker :-), they choose a German accent, which really is quite different. ---Sluzzelin talk  12:33, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * You can usually tell if someone is Austrian when speaking Standard German as well, although I have trouble (as I said, I'm not good at recognizing accents) identifying if he/she is Austrian or Bavarian. What's interesting is that (from my experience at least) people from Vorarlberg speak Standard German neither with a Swiss nor with an Austrian accent. I would've expected a Swiss accent, but they have a sort of own way of speaking, which shows the based-on-specific-dialect-of-speaker-accent thing.Rimush (talk) 13:49, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Sluzzelin has already mentioned prosody – it might be a wrong stereotype, but I'd suspect that, on average, Swiss Standard German is pronounced more slowly than Germany Standard German. Perhaps somebody can refute or confirm this. --84.46.66.247 (talk) 17:53, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess you could do worse than listening to some clips of German-speaking Swiss speaking Standard German on youtube, to get an idea of the spectra (across different dialects, and across different degrees of Helveticness). I currently have no way of listening to stuff, but I'll try to compile something for you later on. ---Sluzzelin talk  14:14, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much, this is all interesting information. I was curious about the extent to which speakers were influenced by their particular Swiss German dialect.  The pronunciation section at Helvetism seems to sum it up quite well, but (as the article notes) it is in the wrong place - shouldn't it be at Swiss Standard German, under a "Phonology" or "Pronunciation" heading?  Perhaps with one of those tables of phonemes, like at e.g. German phonology. Lfh (talk) 15:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, as promised but with some delay, here are a couple of soundbites. (I have to admit that, perhaps fittingly, I had trouble finding exactly what I was looking for in terms of typical markers within the spectrum). Former Federal Council Adolf Ogi's New Year's speech here. His native dialect is that of the Bernese Oberland, a Highest Alemannic German dialect. Of course this is a televised speech (and an Ogi speech to boot) - no one speaks that way in conversation, but the phonology is still typical. Same with Doris Leuthard in this clip. Her dialect is from a part of the canton of Aargau. With a few differences, it resembles Zurich German quite a bit, and to me her Standard German speech could almost be that of a native Zürcher (though there is a clear difference when she speaks dialect). A bit more academic, in the sense that you hear no Chuchichäschtli "ch"s or hawking "k"'s, but still very recognizably Swiss, this time from Zurich is Christoph Mörgeli's "personal remark" here (Here too, it has to be pointed out that Mörgeli's style of pausing and emphasizing so frequently is entirely his; he talks that way in Swiss German too.
 * For some older generation examples, Friedrich Dürrenmatt who had his very own, sloppy, but still very Swiss and audibly Bernese way of speaking Standard German in this famous speech (Just for fun, though he doesn't say much here, he does light a fire in the studio in this old clip, and his speech contrasts with the German moderator's, and Marcel Reich-Ranicki's often imitated accent - MRR also blows at the fire, making things worse). Max Frisch speaks about his relationship with Dürrenmatt here in a fashion typical for academics and intellectuals of his generation. It sounds educated (and these days pretentious, reflected in his gestures). For example, he does use the typically German final obstruent devoicing; he pronounces übrig as "übrich", while most Swiss would say "übrig". Yet he too sounds unmistakably Swiss.
 * Finally, for a caricature, but an entirely realistic and not at all unheard of one, Emil Steinberger translated his Swiss German sketches into Standard German (pronounced with about as strong a Luzern phonology as is possible) in order to reach German audiences, as can be seen in this clip, for example.
 * 84.46 is correct that Swiss German speakers generally speak Standard German at a slower pace than Germans do, with regional and individual exceptions of course, but even people from Zurich, notoriously fast speaking as opposed to the stereotypically slow Bernese, on average speak SG more slowly than Germans do. The speech melody is quite a bit more pronounced, with more ups and downs, than average German speech. People from the cantons of Bern, Obwalden or Uri, for example, have real sing-songy way of speaking, which often carries over into their Standard German too. ---Sluzzelin talk  13:20, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the hard work. I don't know about the OP, but I'm definitely gonna listen to these (for the lulz, if not for anything else). I love it when people provide Utube videos and not videos from some obscure site that looks unsafe. edit: After listening to Ogi, it seems that Swiss Standard bears some similarities to how Transylvanian Saxons speak Standard German. They do it with a Romanian accent, but not like an average Romanian who learned German as a second language - Swiss probably sounds similar because the "r" is pronounced similarly to the Romanian "r". Rimush (talk) 13:32, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for all the work you've put into your reply, Sluzzelin. I certainly will listen to all of the clips, and your information answers my question in full.  I've just started the Ogi clip - it's certainly distinctive.  He doesn't sound like a German, and to my totally non-native ears he actually sounds like a fellow non-native speaker of (Standard) German, although I'm not properly able to judge that.  The alveolar r and the lack of devoicing are what I noticed first.  I laughed at 1:45, not because of anything to do with his speech but because the camera pulls out and a train goes right past him!  Odd place to do a national address, by the side of a railway. Lfh (talk) 15:01, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, ignore that last bit, he's just explained why he's standing in front of that tunnel. Lfh (talk) 15:04, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Name Days
A lot of Scandinavian/Nordic nations have Name days: Sweden > (http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_%C3%B6ver_namnsdagar_i_Sverige_i_datumordning), Denmark > (http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danske_navnedage), Norway > (http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_over_norske_navnedager), Finland > (http://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Faroese_Name_Days), Faroe Islands > (http://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Faroese_Name_Days), Estonia > (http://www.happynameday.info/country.php). Is Iceland an exception? I can't find any Icelandic name calendar in the web. --151.51.156.20 (talk) 14:20, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * My first thought was nordicnames.de, but I see that you already checked it. Rimush (talk) 15:45, 18 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The Icelandic Wikipedia has alphabetical lists of native men's names and native women's names. Additionally, there are pages with given names by number of bearers: 10+, 3 to 9, 2, 1 (A-J), 1 (K-Ö). All of them are linked, and many have an existing article behind them. A few minutes of browsing could not help me find a single name with any name day date specified. There are also articles on every date of the year, but none of them seems to be mentioned as someone's name day.
 * The Icelandic for "name day" seems to be nafndagur. --Theurgist (talk) 20:45, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The link gives no indication that there is any use in Iceland, rather it refers to name days as a Catholic tradition. --Soman (talk) 20:52, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * ...and gives almost no results at all. It seems that Icelanders don't celebrate name days. If you consider how un-Christian most the names at the at icelandic wiki lists are, it is not so strange. --Soman (talk) 20:55, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Note that Icelandic is an inflected language. --Theurgist (talk) 21:05, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * It is strange. Iceland is no more or less Catholic than any other Nordic country. (Being part of Denmark until relatively recently, they converted to protestantism at the same time). Their names aren't really much more or less Christian either, compared to other Nordic countries. --130.237.179.178 (talk) 15:27, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Swiss German (and Swiss French)
The question above (about Swiss German) made me realize that this might be a good place to ask this. I am a French major at NC State University (in the US) and I wish to do a study abroad in French-speaking Switzerland (likely Lausanne). I am also planning on minoring in German, and have taken the first couple levels of that. Part of my reason for choosing Switzerland over the more common option (France) is that they also speak German there, and I was looking at studying in Fribourg, right on the Linguistic Border. I then realized that Swiss German is very different than the High German (from Germany) that I'm learning in class, and realized that it may not be all that useful for my German (I would love to know Swiss German, but I'm not sure that I could follow it with my current level of High German). I know that French French and Swiss French are quite similar, with some differences (the numbers 70, 80, and 90 for example), and should not be a problem, but in terms of getting practice with German, are there any suggestions? Is it a lost cause or would it be worth it to consider going to Fribourg instead? On that vein, does anybody have any personal experience with either college? Thank you, Falconus p t   c 16:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sure the Swiss wouldn't mind speaking Standard German to you, but from what I know, Swiss German is used widely in Switzerland, to the extent that you probably won't get much Hochdeutsch practice from everyday life in a Swiss town (im Gegensatz to Austria, for example, where mostly everybody speaks Austro-Bavarian but you rarely encounter anything written in dialect, and you very rarely hear people speak in the dialect on TV or in radio shows, and where living in z.B. Vienna would give you a lot of Standard German practice). French also seems to outweigh German in Freiburg, according to our article. Rimush (talk) 17:09, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * From what I understand, the Swiss know that Swiss German is a bit of an in-group thing, and if they have you pegged as a foreigner (which will happen as soon as you open your mouth, if not before), most Swiss will use Standard German with you, rather than Schwiizertüütsch. (That's also a bit of linguistic politeness. Swiss are notorious polyglots, and tend to speak the language which is easiest for the person on the other end.) A bigger issue is that on the Francophone side of the Röstigraben they're rather reluctant to speak German, even when their knowledge of it is excellent. I've heard recommendations that, for non-German-speaking foreigners dealing with a Francophone Swiss, it's better to muddle through with imperfect English, rather than "insult" them with perfect German. But, as with all things, it'll vary based on who, exactly, you're interacting with. (And due to the fantastic train system, it's quite straightforward to travel from Lausanne to German-speaking Zurich/Bern/Appenzell/etc. if you do want to interact with German speakers.) -- 174.24.196.51 (talk) 19:08, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for the responses. Would the classes conducted in German at Fribourg be in Swiss Standard German or Swiss German?  Thanks, Falconus p  t   c 03:15, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Swiss Standard, I would think. Rimush (talk) 08:35, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * A bit off topic, but I found it curious that language courses teaching Swiss German (not talking about classes conducted in Swiss German) as opposed to Standard German were apparently unusual enough in Switzerland to appear on television for their novelty value a few years ago. There had been some demand from immigrants who said that learning (or knowing) Standard German is not enough to fully integrate into Swiss German speaking communities. --84.46.72.26 (talk) 13:48, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * It is true that the demand for Swiss German classes has risen. On the one hand, speaking dialect has increased (on the radio, on television, at events, etc, even writing in dialect, previously done by very few people, has become popular with text-messaging and e-mails). On the other hand, Switzerland now has a higher percentage of highly-educated immigrants (many of them from Germany) than it had previously, and these immigrants are more interested in taking classes, for various reasons. These Schwyzertütsch classes, however, are all designed for people who speak or at least understand Standard German. The American friend I mentioned two threads above wanted to learn Swiss German without learning German, but it was impossible to find either a course or even learning material for non-German speakers, such as English, French, or Italian (these were the languages she spoke). Meanwhile I have found such a learn-box, at a ridiculous price, but at the time, her only option was to find a private teacher.
 * What 174.24 says about switching to Standard German "as soon as you open your mouth, if not before" is true, to the extent that it annoyed my friend because she actually understood Standard German less well than dialect. Regarding Falconus, I do have to say that while Swiss German speakers will try to accomodate you by switching when addressing you directly, they might very well switch back to dialect when saying something to someone else in the group. I observed this very often during my own university days in Zurich when we were a mixed group. (Maybe you could hang out with the German students? :-) ---Sluzzelin talk  22:56, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Alright, thank you :-). Falconus p t   c 03:34, 23 July 2010 (UTC)