well lets put it this way...
growing up in australia...with a malay/indian/arabic mother and a swiss father makes life pretty damn interesting..

but when it comes to languages i wish i could say that i was the master of all the languages i could have learnt. unfortionalty (i cant spell) having grown up in australia where english is about the only language u will servive with i learnt very little of the 5 (malay, inidan, arabic, swiss and high german) languages i could have learnt...i understand malay and know many names of things such as door, shoes ect, indian i used to know how to count but not anymore...arabic i know very little only through religion. german from school but this also is minimal...and then of course my belovered swiss...which ive only become fluent in in the last 6 monthes prior to this i had a basic knowledge and could communicate very simply usuing many hand signals...

but in saying this when i came to switzerland i came wanting to learn swiss before german for the simple reason that if u can speak swiss u can speak with the locals and this opens up so many doors so early on. also being the age i am this also makes sence as i would never speak to people my age in high german (even if i could speak high german)

it continues to confuse and drive me up the wall that switzerlands written language is German...where is that going to get anyone...this only helps when u try to speak to a Walliser...(walliser is just some gobeli gook that some random decided to speak...sorry i mean no offence by that and i have nothin agaist the people...just thier funny speak ;-P) i think its reasonable that in school the kids take thier oral lessons in swiss but why write in german...who cant understand written dialect...

now dialect that brings a whole other side to the story but if u ask a swiss person where so and so's dialect comes from they will know. there for writing in swiss german again would be no problem (of course this is minusing those wierdos from Wallis)

so...in saying this...i speak Zuri Dialect (but my fathers side of the family origionate from Bern) and i understand pretty much everything they say with the exception of a few thing...and of course the hidden words and phrases that one only learns with time (but this is also true for Zuri Duutch) as for the other dialects if u curve ur tongue in a funny way i pretty much gaurantee u will be able to speak any dialect...(especially basel ;-P)

as for high german and speaking it...WE ARE IN SWITZERLAND...and those out there who are swiss and try to speak high german forget it...it scares the tourists and the long lost citizens (ie me). it doesnt get me any closer to understanding anything that someone is trying to say if they say it in swiss german and i dont get it and later they repeat it but in high german.

and those of you out there who wonder weather to learn high german or swiss german when u come, its a simple decision...learn swiss german... u will intergrate into soceity much quicker..and when u need to sound sophisticated just simply add "en" to the end of a swiss word eg muche becomes muchen...(hehe) or get people to speak swiss german to you, u will learn it that way and then later take a german class (siwss learning classes are a joke becuase the text book is written in german so if u speak english and not much german or no german ur not goin to get far)

either way...swiss is a great language, once your at the point of understanding the jokes then u know u have progressed from level one to FLUENT.