1.
According to recent statistics, Switzerland has a population of around 7.6 million. These people live in one of the 26 cantons, in one of around 2,700 municipalities, and they speak many tongues. As is well known, Switzerland has four official languages: German, French, Italian and Rumantsch (an official national language since 1938, and in some areas a language of government since 1996). 63.7 % of the population speak German, 20.4 % French, 6.4 % Italian and 0.5 % Rumantsch. Of course, there are plenty more names on the list: languages spoken in Switzerland also include Spanish, Turkish, Albanian, Portuguese, Croatian, and so on.

2.
The author, who writes in Basel, has something in common with the actress standing on the stage in Lausanne, and that they also share with the sculptor in Lugano: they each live and work in Switzerland and also in a language area that stops in the middle of the country. That means they work at the edge of large language areas and are linked by a common language to a culture that extends beyond the nation’s borders – with the exception of Rumantsch language and culture.
Four language areas sit side by side in Switzerland, almost silently. Each hardly notices that the others are there. Nor are they really noticed by the language areas of which they are satellites, offshoots or terminal moraines. German-speaking Switzerland is essentially the Sicily of the German-speaking world; French-speaking Switzerland is the Balkans of France; Ticino is in its way the North Pole of Italy. In their ancestral language areas, the Ticinese, the French and the German-speaking Swiss are all parts of a minority – but that is clearly far from sufficient reason to talk to each other in Switzerland. The minority relationships that apply towards the outside are also reconstituted in Switzerland. German-speaking Switzerland – trivial from a German perspective – makes up the greater part of the country’s population. German is therefore the language of the majority. Anyone who wishes to speak to that majority must therefore speak German – though this majority in turn prefers to speak its own, Swiss, dialect forms of the language.

3
When it comes to dealing with German-speaking Switzerland, the biggest hurdle facing the country’s French and Italian speakers is its preference for local variants. What they learn in school is not one of the many and diverse dialects of Swiss German, but rather the standard form. German speakers in Switzerland often have inhibitions about using this standard version, which they prefer to call “written German”. It has the air of an acquired skill, something distanced and distancing; they feel ill at ease and tend to speak German with a dash of their own dialect, thus establishing an audible distance from the way that “German Germans” speak. This also conceals (with a view to understanding) a degree of uncertainty in using this language, the complexity of which puts many off using it. Indeed, for many standard German has something alien about it – this despite the fact that German TV stations (and not just Viva, Sat1 or RTL) attract large audiences in German-speaking Switzerland. Dialect also acts as a means of differentiation – though it is at the same time localization, by which we exclude ourselves from the cultural circle of the standard language. Just as people do in Alsace, the Basque country, Ireland, or South Tyrol.

4
How many misunderstandings, then, can we allow ourselves if at least a minimum of understanding is to remain possible? Can it work: a country that speaks so many languages and in which each language area looks out for itself? How is it that the country has not long since broken irrevocably apart?
It works. And the country doesnÂ’t break apart.
Around 2,700 municipalities – a figure I’ve already mentioned – and 26 cantons, all with astonishingly wide powers. The cantons have come together over the course of time, out of necessity. They had no choice. The political imperative to understand each other was incontestable, yet they reduced it as fast as possible to a minimum of occasions. And naturally, misunderstandings repeatedly occur – but misunderstandings can only arise is situations where success – understanding – is possible. Misunderstandings are the cement that only occurs in dialogue.
One thing everybody in Switzerland agrees about is that people should, as far as possible, leave each other in peace. Wherever you live and whatever language you speak, in many areas, people perceive each other via a country outside their own. Someone writing in French-speaking Switzerland, for example, often only gets noticed in the German-speaking part when they have been noticed in Paris. But attracting attention in Paris is not easy. Although writers from French-speaking Switzerland are readily understood in France, because there is no linguistic barrier separating the two areas, membership of the French-speaking world is no guarantee of access to the literary world of France. This is traditionally strongly oriented towards Paris, and pays little attention to what it perceives as peripheral areas.
The common language is often a less important factor than nationality.

5
In Switzerland, as in any multilingual country, there is little cross-pollination or overlap between the various languages. They exist side by side, and the language barriers also separate mentalities. In other words each person may have a different perception of what constitutes Swissness, and the sum of these perceptions is what makes the country. Anyone in Switzerland who seeks to identify either for themselves or for foreign visitors what is typically Swiss is often hard put to do so – and that in itself is typically Swiss.
Incidentally, café complet is one of the relatively small number of expressions that is understood throughout Switzerland. “Café complet is an evening meal, lighter than supper, consisting of bread, cheese, butter and jam accompanied by coffee with milk. In standard French, the expression indicates a breakfast where the drink is coffee. The specifically Swiss-French element is that the name is most often used to designate a light meal taken in the evening and not the morning. The expression has been adopted by other language groups within the country.”
(Dictionnaire suisse romand [Swiss French Dictionary], 1997)

6
By permitting the existing linguistic diversity but actually wishing to add another language – English – Switzerland is seeking to evade all the potential misunderstandings latent within its multilingual environment. People dodge misunderstandings by avoiding each other as far as possible. For the various languages are invariably bound up with different cultures, and that makes for hard work.
The use of English may temporarily facilitate dialogue and understanding, but ultimately it serves as a reminder of the problem that it is intended to solve but which it cannot escape. Despite, or perhaps because of, this many people prefer to learn English rather than one of the other national languages. English, the fifth language of Switzerland. A few things remain in Latin: Confoederatio Helvetica, abbreviated to CH on every motor vehicle, or Pro Litteris or Pro Juventute etc.

7
Difficulties can arise not only between the various languages, but also within a single language. As is so often the case, literature provides the most accurate information. German-speaking Swiss writers do not always write in the same way as they speak. They write in a written language that has a few peculiarities of its own. Although intimately bound up with the rest of the German-speaking world, they are nevertheless divided by a border – a fact which becomes obvious when their works are published by a German publishing house. They often have to adapt to considerable linguistic constraints: Helvetisms (peculiarly Swiss terms), for instance, are not always welcome. Texts from Switzerland are now altered to feature the ß symbol for the double “s”, abolished in Switzerland when the country officially went its own way before World War Two. Something previously perceived as a typographical idiosyncrasy of German-speaking Switzerland, a means of differentiation within a shared language, is as it were paid back when the work is taken to Germany. The question of language is also a question of power. Parkieren becomes parken, Fahrausweis (driving licence) becomes Führerschein, and suddenly it is once again unclear whether the present perfect of sitzen is formed with sein or haben. These then become features that enable a literary work to be easily ascribed to a particular nation in cases where, from the point of view of form and content, it is supremely unimportant.
It’s no easier for the Austrians, who are constantly required to explain that a Trafik is a Tabakladen – a tobacconist’s. When Austria joined the EU, it succeeded in rescuing 23 expressions for incorporation into standardized EU German, including Beiried for Roastbeef and Kren for Meerrettich (horseradish).

8
There are varieties in all languages, and they are seldom the result of chance. They are all related to history, and have been marked by a social development on which they in their turn now exert a formative influence. Turns of phrase are used in Ticino that are virtually incomprehensible in Italy. There are expressions used in French-speaking Switzerland that can raise hackles in France. ItÂ’s no different in German-speaking Switzerland.
Swiss-German football enthusiasts talk about der Halbfinal, while Germans and Austrians use das Halbfinale to mean the same thing. The word Hagebuche is used in Switzerland for the hornbeam tree – but in all the other German-speaking countries it is called Weissbuche. The only completely unambiguous way of referring to it is to use its Latin name, Carpinus betulus. The mosquito that bites us is called a Gelse in Austria; in Germany and Switzerland itÂ’s a Mücke or Schnake. Using the word Flaumer to ask for a mop will get you nowhere outside Switzerland. Someone working for the Bund in Switzerland is employed by the federal administration, and not – as in Germany – doing military service. And despite what its name may suggest, Knabenschiessen doesnÂ’t involve shooting boys; rather, it is a traditional, annual shooting competition for young people between the ages of 13 and 16 in Zurich, in which formerly only boys were permitted to take part.

9
The fact that such things need to be explained does no harm: it keeps the conversation moving. Moreover, such linguistic variety has a certain entertainment value, precisely because of the misunderstandings it can generate. There is a wonderful dictionary, almost a thousand pages in length, that documents the regional varieties of German. Using this book is not only amusing; it is also a curative experience. The richness and diversity of the peculiarities collated within its pages puts into perspective – and puts to shame – the facile assumption of right and wrong, and therefore of what constitutes the standard language – which, as it emerges, is far from being as clear and unambiguous as one might imagine. One word can be a variant of another, and vice versa. The dictionary systematically records usage as standard in Austria, Switzerland and Germany, but also in Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, eastern Belgium and South Tyrol. Every language is a storehouse and a melting pot, and therefore a standard language in its own right. The tension between the many standard languages is also in its way vital, since in searching for the right word, one is also obliged to clarify exactly what it is one is trying to say.

10
If one word is a variant of another, then it is clear there is much more at stake than merely language; For one person’s understanding can be another person’s misunderstanding – and one must explain the other. The stories that Swiss speakers have to tell themselves and each other in order to make themselves understood are in essence not much different from those that Europe must also tell itself – with even more languages. The opportunities for misunderstanding are matched by the charm of the efforts necessary to avoid them. One must simply enjoy these misunderstandings. They save us a lot of problems. They caution us to use care in dealing with each other, and sometimes they feed a healthy mistrust of all the power that lies behind language.

(Translated by Geoff Spearing)