One of my neighbor complained to me that she can not communicate with her son in law because she is from Wallis!!!

Actually it just occurred to me: because of how it is in Switzerland with languages one could think that they are more sympathetic to those who doesn't understand the dialects? It's safe to assume that at some point they(Swiss) too had encountered a similar situation where they didn't understand each other fully and was frustrated. One tends to be more sympathetic/understanding of others if they themselves has had similar experiences or at least I thought...

I also do not blame the host. I am annoyed(not just to the host but the guests as well) but at least I do know that it isn't intentional.... If I hadn't had such a great relationship with my neighbors I might have thought they were intentionally ignoring me...

BTW the host called me that evening and left a msg on my anwer.machine asking me that I should come up!! In HG!!!! At least she made sure I understood that!!!

The difference between high and low German is that one was the language spoken in the highlands (to the south) and the other in the lowlands (to the north). The standardisation of high German as the national language is an accident of history, Luther being a hochdeutsch speaker and therefore translating the bible into his native tongue.

Captain, I think most of us here agree with the excellent points you have made. My only issue is this - however inconsiderate it is of the others at the party, it will not help the OP to adopt a powerless victim position. Otherwise she may just get frustrated about integrating with SGs and give up.

Livinginswiss obviously wants to connect with her neighbours and integrate, but denied herself an opportunity because of the barriers created by others. I just think if she wants to get her way, she needs to empower herself a bit more - and that means if the others won't change, she can change something to find a way forward. I sympathise with her wholeheartedly - I've had the same problem myself, and I've had to solve it myself, because not many people here will do much to accommodate a foreigner.

I would also suggest that although some of the people in this situation were being deliberately inconsiderate, others may have just become really at ease. I often end up in conversations with SGs where as they become more relaxed in my company, they also speak HG more "naturally" including the mistakes they normally make, and then eventually switch over to SG. If I understand what they are saying, I go with the flow, if I don't understand it, but can live without an understanding, I just urge them to continue speaking and if we hit a wall, I apologise for being really bad at SG. If they speak English, they try to switch to that, and I reel them back into HG, and if they speak no English they switch to HG,(except for my MIL who persists with SG and asks my husband to translate to HG!).

Perhaps Livinginswiss first needs to accept that although it was inconsiderate of the others, they are unlikely to change for her, so if she desires their friendship, she must empower herself and find a way forward that works for her.

I wanted to share my experience too, about a similar situation. I along with my family had gone to a party with predominately Indian guests and an Indian host. There were just a couple, who were swiss german. Everyone at the party was speaking hindi and was completely oblivious of the presence of this couple. Nobody spoke to them except maybe a very few sentences by the host. But they were gracious enough to smile all the time and they did not even seem to be uncomfortable. Sometimes looking at the smiling faces of others and observing animated conversation can also create a feeling of fellowship. Believe me this thing about language is not a swiss phenomenon, try going to India we have 1600 languages there, including various dialects.