Hello,
I would like to know what you think about the Berlitz school in Zurich
to learn German,a lady had learn there about 5 years ago,and another
lady told me a wife of a co worker is happy with that school.
I need to learn German to be able to work,i did a one month intensive
paid by my husband job at the Migros in Oerlikon,but i was not happy
so as a couple of other students in the class,it was a beginner class,but
we where mix with peoples that already lived here for 4 to 6 years and
could speak already a good German,i would love to get your imput on
Berlitz in Zurich ,
thank you.

Hi,

Have you tried searching EF for posts with the phrase

berlitz school

?

Can say anything about the Berlitz school, but I went to the Benedict School.
It was better than the Migros courses. But honestly, I don't think you can expect to be fluent in a month... or even two...

thank you both for your advices
of course i know i will not be
fluent in a month or two,i guess after
6 months of German i will be able to speak enough German for
Peoples to understand me,and maybe to get a job!

I went to Berlitz, and it was excellent! It is very expensive though,
and my old company paid for it.

It will cost 100-120CHF per hour.

I'm just looking at courses now, some sound better than others so I guess it will depend on price, attendance hours and convenience.

Haven't noticed if any include accommodation as they can do, e.g. in Austria (Actilingua) and a friend who learnt French in Rouen had.

Prices are certainly hefty all round.....makes the fee for my little nightschool German class here look like pocket money!

yes the intensive course is like chf 1080 a month
but migros is 980 so if its grat i think the chf 100 more
is worht it,like i say i did one month intensive Migros
at Oerlikon and was not happy,we were a beginner class
but there was peoples from Eastern Europe that have been living and
working here for between 2 and 5 years and where with us,it didnt made
any sense to me,either you never learn German or you already know have you been years in the Country,i used to work with Latin American Girls after couple of Months i could inderstand Spanish,and i never learn it.
In my class at Migros there was a English Teacer from Australia he left the class also he was also with a lot of frustration as well,and other proples cpoudn t afford it,i just wish to find the right school,as it is very expensive,
I heard not too good about Allemania,yes they are half the price,but i need to learn to get a job,and couldn t go to school for couple of Months because of the $,we had to sell our Condo in the States !
thank you,have a good day.

Many years ago I took Berlitz lessons in German and in French. For what it is worth, I speak fluent French, have argued before courts in French, and have a PhD in international law from a Belgian university. I have been in a struggle with German for years. Although my mother told me that I used to chatter to my grandmother in Schwyzerdeutsch, you wouldn't know that today. I speak and read badly in German, and rarely go far beyond the Swiss language divide for that reason.

But I have studied, and speak at least at a tourist level, a number of other languages. I aced the MLAT, but I know now that the MLAT only tests reasoning skill. To get the most out of Berlitz you've got to have a photographic (or more exactly, phonographic) memory. You are paying by the second (and by the way, it's up to you, in private lessons, to keep your instructor on point and not let him or her start chattering away in English). If the instructor has to repeat, then you are paying double.

Of course the idea is that you will get practice speaking and learn from doing. The method was perfected by DLI and FSI, the Defense Language Institute and the Foreign Service Institute. I studied Korean for a year at the latter, and was paid my full salary while learning. It's hard to learn a language part-time, and how much you succeed depends on your talent and your memory skills. One of the least intelligent persons I ever met, a Czech stage hand who had worked for my grandfather and married a Swiss and lived in Zug, could learn languages by osmosis: she spoke German, Schwyzerdeutsch, English and Italian. She had never been in an English-speaking country, she learned it from my grandfather who told jokes on stage in six languages. And Italian she learned from her Gastarbeiter boyfriend.

So: don't ask how 'effective' Berlitz is. That depends on you. Their method is valid, but expensive. Use it as a language drill, and study on your own as well. I haven't tried language software because it's decades since I studied a language. But I remember the FSI language labs and I can say that every exposure to a language reinforces what you learn elsewhere. But few people can learn after puberty the way children learn in infancy: it's for that reason that I sent all of our children to various French lycées around the world. For what it is worth they all got 'A' or 'A*' in GCSE German. But they don't speak German in any recognisable fashion: they speak French. Indeed, one is married to a Frenchman and lives and works in Paris.

my friend went to this school for 3 months intensive .. and i also saw the book they use to teach .. if you are smart , learn quick , then go ahead .. but if not then dont try .. my friend start from a1 and finish a2 in 3 months .. its too fast !!

As you know "intensive course", so I think it is not so fast, like me, I am learning intensive German in Migros Klubschule, to finish Level A1 (means A1/1 and A1/2) and A2 (A2/1 + A2/2), we need 4 months. Personally, I think it is better when we shtudy in a normal course, 2 or 3 days a weeks, so that we have a more time to review in details. Studying in intensive course, I often skip many new words or some Grammar.

Learning German in Switzerland is the same as learning German In Denmark, because no one speaks German (besides is the official language!). When you speak German to swiss people, mostly will answer you in a dialect (and there are several dialects: Züri-deutsch, Bern-deutsch, Walliser-deutsch, etc...) and is very hard to understand.
If you have special talent for language, you could learn well german, but you could also learn it in your country.
Mostly of people after several years in Switzerland will end up speaking not well German, because the English accent will mix with the Swiss-german accent and words. People in Germany will have hard time to understand your German!

True, but did you notice you're answering a message from three years ago?

Can you say anything about the Bellinqua school?
Is it better than the Migros courses?

No, Lead, not true at all.

In the contrary to popular belief Swiss German is relatively poorly variegated from one canton to the other,

and it's not far away from Standard German (from a linguistic point of view it's even closer to "High German" - which is called "high" not because of the "higher" standard, but because it's been built by dialects from upper Germany so Switzerland included and, unlike lower German, Dutch and English, has done all vowel shifts - than many other German or Germanic dialects), see Ulrich Ammon e.g.

And a person who wants to work and to live in the German speaking part of CH does very well to learn there instead of going to do so at Hanover e.g.

O.K. I didn't realize the message was 3 years old. I guess my answer could help someone who is new in switzerland and is reading this thread for the first time.

So not true at all. When I speak high german to Swiss people they nearly every time answer me back in high german. Also you can not seriously say that you would not be better off learning german in switzerland as a pose to say..... australia where no one speaks german ???
Also it really depends iff you endevour to learn swiss german after lerarning high german or if you keep your conversation in high german. An english accent is to be expected but that is not to say that one does not speak good german.
I have always tried to slowly take on the swiss german whilst learning high german as i will never live in germany and at work only swiss german is spoken, however naturally getting the written skills up to grade is most important for the long term. I really suggest not becoming satisfied with simply being able to speak and converse in the local dialect but perservering and aquiring the written skills...

Nonsense. Or at the very least, living in Switzerland does not cause one to speak High German poorly. Other factors would then be at play.

Learning Swiss German does not exclude learning High German. Indeed it's a good idea to learn High German before learning Swiss German.

If you are learning High German in Switzerland, you will also have the added benefit of knowing / understanding Swiss German with time. This doesn't mean that you will end up not being able to speak clear High German any more. At most, you might adopt the Swiss intonation, but that's okay.

My High German has improved so much since moving to Zurich - there are plenty of High German speakers here from Germany or Austria for example, and I'm now able to understand and speak conversational Swiss German too.

I have the best of both worlds.

True.


Or in the meantime. I think it's quite difficult to learn a language just by "doing" i.e. speaking. Imo one needs written texts, vocabulary and a grammar overview. Impossible without (standard) High German.


True again. It's an urban myth that a German wouldn't understand Schwyzertütsch easily and that a Swiss couldn't switch to High German. Both variations are very close, and again: The southern germanic dialects are much easier to be understood than northern ones (also for a Northener, that's the point).

If that were true, Swiss programs (in Swiss-German) wouldn't need subtitles when shown on German TV, would they?

I know plenty of northern Germans who do not understand Swiss-German. Southern Germans generally do, however.

In the same vein, I once had a Scottish friend that I spoke French with, as I couldn't understand his English (and we both spoke great French).

Years ago I was on a business trip with some young Ticinese colleagues and asked why they spoke Italian to each other rather than dialect, and they explained that, unlike their older colleagues, they were not yet able to understand each others' dialects (they now do, but this was ten years ago).

Tom

It's psychology.

Like watching old Hans Moser-movies. After 5 minutes you forget that he's a Vienna accent and that the movie's audio is bad.


They say so because they think they don't. But this is nonsense.
If they were listening to their own (inexising as dead) dialects they would think it's rather English. Also Platt is not German, but another language.


Who speaks dialect in Ticino?

And most of those who do don't know that in no part of Sottoceneri besides immigrants from Sopraceneri nobody ever spoke Ticinese but, at least from Lower Malcantone to the east, Comasco.