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| I have the feeling that we expats tend to think that German is what the Swiss consider their language, perhaps because the written form in official documents is German. | |
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Well if you say Swiss, I presume you mean German-speaking Swiss. French and Italian-speaking Swiss may be a little upset to hear you say that.
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| However, it seems in reality each Swiss person outside of Romandie and Ticino feels most at home with their own version of Swiss German. | |
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That may be the case, but the fact is that one of the four official languages of Switzerland is German, *not* Swiss-German. For example in the parliament you won't hear dialect being spoken - it's not allowed.
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| If the Swiss prefer to speak their own Swiss German, and if the young people write in it, this is effectively their true language, and it may evolve into a more widely adopted written form over the next few decades, you never know. | |
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If that were to happen it would have a number of implications. I can only refer to an article which I posted at the start of this thread which explains the various dangers caused by the rise of dialect:
http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/swissin...05&sid=6407486
If as you say Swiss-German becomes a standardised written language (which doesn't appear to be on the horizon just yet) then it would become even harder for the Swiss to use high German. Swiss German is really a tiny language area sitting right next to a much larger area which uses standardised German (Germany, Austria and to a certain extent as a second language in neighbouring countries to the East). If the German Swiss lost their ability to communicate in High German how would they do business with these countries? In English? What about learning a second language for the French and Italian speakers? By learning only dialect they also lose the ability to communicate with those in the much larger German speaking world.
You could argue that smaller countries have their own dialect/language and this isn't a problem, but in those smaller countries they pretty much ALL use English to communicate with other countries and this is no problem. This is not universal in the German-speaking world!
The Swiss-German speakers are caught between a rock and hard place because their dialect is too different to be understood by others, and too close to German to justify splitting it off entirely.
But the bottom line is that the rise and widespread use of dialect (especially in written form) means that the standard of High German declines in Switzerland, and this is ultimately a bad thing for the country - it is after all one of their official languages.