Although it's really annoying when people automatically speak to me in Swiss German, we have to understand that it is their mother tongue. Our mother tongue is the most comfortable language and without thinking that's the language that comes straight out of our mouth. I guess also a lot of english speaking people don't have experience in living in amongst so many different languages. I'm from Australia, we only speak english so it is a shock with so many different languages flying around. But I don't think we can get angry at the swiss, let's face it whatever language they speak back to us, english, swiss german or high german, someone will be unhappy with the choice they made in what language to speak to us. It's really not their fault that swiss german is not a written language. It all has to do with the separation of people by the mountains (also the cantons), they didn't always have tunnels to connect communities, so there was major isolation. This lead to different dialects coming about that weren't actually written. Switzerland is a very special country with 4 languages well actually 5 including high german, so there is bound to be confusion. I guess we all just have to work out how to best deal with it individually and what works best for us. I'm really struggling with german, although everyone says i'm doing really well, it is hard that I can't understand Swiss German. It's going to be a long journey, for those of us who have married a swiss and plan to live here. Chins up