I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Zug and no one except the friendly cashier speaks Swiss German. It's mainly English with a sprinkling of German. Really frustrating. Why did I bother learning the blooming language if no one speaks it anymore? By they way, if you're here, I'm the leggy blonde in the corner toting an LV handbag.

That's because you are in Starbucks.

BTW you look great.

Bah, you missed me by about 3 hours. Shame, too, I always like pretending to read a book while covertly looking at leggy blondes.

you two should meet up at starbucks. fortunately i don't have the dying language problem in vaud. still learning french after about 4 years. its hard.

If I were a man I would madly fall in love with you. Swiss German though? Did you really have to...?

Get a Swiss friend under the age of 30, then wish you were back at Starbucks and realizing how easy life used to be.

Any Swiss friend I have under 30 doesn't speak high german with me, just the Swiss or the texting in SG is insane. They all say it's the best way to go, but to be honest, I think the arabic I hear on the train is easier to understand then why people say stuff like Hooordi geille.

I must have walked past you twice if you were there at the time you posted.

Swiss German in Zug though? On a sunny Saturday afternoon? The locals were probably all off doing energetic things on hills in SZ and letting the expats invade the town centre.

I tried out some Swiss German in the fitness centre today and in the shops in town. Wish I'd gone to Starbuck nows!

Stephen NE: I think I saw you. Were you the one talking loudly on your mobile while two other women were trying to ignore you?

Cute shoes, by the way.

No, I was the one who was trying to catch the eye of the prettier of the two women who were trying to ignore the cute-shoed man talking loudly on his mobile phone who you noticed. I would have said hello of course but I was intimidated by the LV bag .

Probably full of expats. Try Cafe Speck next time.

Beside the point that Zug is rumoured to be a widely English speaking city, you were in Starbucks. Go to a bit less "English-ized" places and you will hear everybody speaking dialect. In Zürich and around it, most people speak dialect, and by "most people" I include people of Italain, Portuguese, Albanian/Kosovari, Turkish, Arab origin.

Zug ain't that "English-ized" - I hear more Russian, Portuguese, Albanian, Kosovari than English. When those groups mix together with friends from other nationalities, they are most likely to speak English as a common communication language.

They don't around here, either!

Tom

Wow, you manage to hear the différence?!?! I admire your linguistic talent. Strange though, that you don't mention the difference between Gheg and Tosk for Albania. Is Kosovari Gheg that easy to distinguish?

The idea of Russians, Albanians and Portuguese Friends sitting together and speak English is just cute. Take a picture when you see that happen.

Maybe the natives are finally starting to realize just how offensive-to-the-ears their language really is?

(Oooh. I can feel the groans coming for that one!)

They Swiss German is more pure as it resembles old German.

the Québecois say that about their French as well, by the way.

Personally, I find the Swiss easier to understand because they speak more slowly than the Germans.... even when they are speaking Swiss German.

Well, all I hear is a bunch of "ckeaee" (I don't even know how to describe that sound with letters!). Basically, the equivalent of a cat coughing up a fur ball.

Would be interesting to hear Swiss German spoken with native German ears.

Let's distinguish between linguistic and popular visualisations. Both are all right, but different.
Linguistically, you'll have to define old German first. If you consider middle-high-German as such, then the main feature that Swiss German dialects kept are the vowels, although ei/i: is a huge mess and the rules are extremely complex, it's a kind of staggered process from Basel to Goms. When looking carefully, one sees that Eastern Swiss German introduced changes in the vowel system called vowel split and thus are not as close to the middle-high-German system as the southern Baden dialects on the German side.
For the consonants, the Swiss dialects pushed the changes farther than any other dialect, to the point that the consonant system of most Swiss dialects distort totally the middle-high-German one. Chur-dialect and Basel-dialect being influenced heavily by migrants from territories that are now Germany (Bodenseealemanish and Niederalemanish), the changes are more restricted and thus closer to middle-high-German norm.

Same with French: Of course there is a strong base of 17th and 18th century northern and western oïl-French in Québec still today, but it doesn't mean that they only kept this and didn't add anything, including English expressions translated and integrated to normal language at any language levels. The vocabulary evolved too, meanings have mutated differently from French in France but they are mutations nonetheless. Not every language difference between Québec and France is due to quebecois archaism, it can also be an original genuine evolution of their own.

Sicher scho, mir sind villicht halt nöd e so blöd dass mir 10 Stutz für en café wand zahle .....