Thanks for all of the answers and sentiments. It seems that the consensus so far is that Hoch Deutsch is used in business environments and really needs to be the language learned first. Does this mean that Swiss-Germans change their pronunciation, etc. at work (in a professional environment) and then revert to Swiss-German at home or in casual conversation? If not, this would mean that one needs to be able to understand Swiss-German pronunciation in a business environment. And from the pronunciation that I have heard when I have been there (at least in Eastern Switzerland), it was quite different than what I had learned in high school (my German teacher was a native German speaker) and also what I have heard in Germany.