Hi all,

Stupid question possibly but does anybody know if there are free Swiss German langauge courses in the Baden/Zurich areas?

Cheers

Find yourself a Swiss 'language partner' - you learn Swiss German from him/her and teach English the other way - it's a good and cheap way to getting the basics right; if you want to speak Swiss German properly, there's probably no way out of a language school...

The free courses are usually high German but in a Swiss context, with local peculiarities, customs, greetings etc. If you don't have any German it would be best to start with them anyway, so you can read and write at least!

Can you suggest any specific ones?

A friend of mine's wife went to free German courses in Luzern and said that they were not good at all. She said the people were really slow and couldn't say much more than "Guten Tag"( exagerrated a bit ).

What is wrong with Klubschule Migros?

There are often courses organised by the town where you reside for newcomers, not usually completely free, but subsidised. The level wouldn't be great if you seriously want to learn in a hurry. They function more on a social level for people who normally wouldn't or couldn't go to a normal language course-for economic or educational reasons, for example.

I don't know anything about them. Are they free?

No. But very reasonable in price.

I did an "Understanding Swiss German" course at the Volkhochschule in Basel. These are also not free but very reasonable (around 400 Chf for a semester) but as the teaching language was German/Swiss German they required you to have at least attained level B1 in German (or be a native speaker) before you could take the course.

Cool, okay I will have a look into some of those but as I am not working at the moment, would still like to find something free first if there is anything out there. If there is not then I will start examining paid for options but I don't really want to pay for months of courses when I don't know where I will be next month.

Then tandem partner has to be your best bet .. plus if your German is not so good (you do not say) you could swop it for English instead and get over the strangeness I experienced of learning a new language through the medium of a third language (German) that I still wasn't totally at home with. As it was, I found I could understand the teacher speaking Swiss German easier than I could understand the other students who were mostly from Northern Germany!

Most probably a very stupid question but what is this tandem partner thing as the name seems to indicate that it is a good idea and how do I find one?
Thanks.

The Sticky at the top of this Language Corner Forum. You know where it says 'Tandem...'
Mind you, I'm not surprised you didn't notice it. I'm having a campaign to have the title made Bold!

If you're unemployed but actively on the job search, then you could try getting classes through the RAV, the regional unemployment agency. The first step would be to go to your Gemeinde and let them know you're looking but your German is lacking. They'll take it from there step-by-step.

May be, you can try learning from websites and subscribe for free mails.