I'm Swiss and when I read " in Swiss" refering to my country it hurts a bit.

Can't imagine that non native English speakers who post on this forum ignore that the name of this country is something different than just "Swiss".

Were we a BIG NATION I wonder if they'd call it "Swiss" ?!

Thank you for posting this interesting thread .

That all may be but if you are not even able to say the name of a country in question correctly in English, then you have to realize that none of your statements is taken too seriously

A) no it is not
B) Switzerland is NOT grammar

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In spite of all the companies starting with "British" like British Airways, British Midland Airways, etc, it would not be very intelligent to say "I was in British over the weekend"

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Deutschland (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) in English language is Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) and Germans of course know this, but might feel pissed if somebody said in English "I visited Deutsch last week"

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No, rude would be to speak about "Frank" when meaning Frankreich.

Genf is the German language name, and the lake there in German is Genfersee and in English Lake of Geneva, for the Genevois Lac de Genève, while for the Vaudois only the western tip is Lac de Genève and the rest Lac Léman.

Genfer See

As he asked for the "Swiss-German" word, it of course would be
city : Gämf
lake : Gämfersee

That's true for Züridüütsch and many other dialects. In Sanggallertüttsch and quite a few other dialects, however, it clearly is Gemf and Gemfersee.

Actually they asked for the Swiss German word, not the Swiss-German word, so it would be Genfersee.

The question is not why people call this country Swiss, but rather how did they get here, given the fact..
Introduction no. x
Hello there, I will soon move to Swiss and I 'll work for a bank in Swiss, it's the 180.000 chf salary good enough to feed me, my spouse and my 2 cats?

I'm afraid I will have to go with Adrian on this one.. this is also the mental image I have when someone substitutes Swiss for Switzerland; an inability to get even the countries' name right you live/are interested in does not speak for your cognitive abilities.

Hmmmm,

So this must be the reason why we don't often hear of these people in Australia.

Imagine the pile of drool, and how long it would take their stubby little fingers to type into a travel search:

"Poorly pronounced English conjugations of abbreviations and coloquialisms"

Vs

"Swiss"

I'd go to Switerland as well.





oh wait...... they go to "OZ"

Maybe the problem is that people simply don't get the difference between Proper Noun and Adjective?

Switzerland = Proper Noun
Swiss = Adjective

Australia = Proper Noun
Oz = Proper Noun (albeit a short form)
Australian = Adjective


Kids just don't get dragged up right these days..

not sure why people would expect to be able to name a third country in a third language. swiss would be a pretty good guess.

i'd like to see your guesses at switzerland is called in chinese

I always assumed they'd started writing "Swiss Confederation", but got distracted by a shiny.

The point is.......English speakers do it too. Thats the whole point of the thread. I assume that Chinese speakers know what Switzerland is called in Chinese

Rui shi :-) But I knew that already. (Luckily you picked the only foreign language I have some skill in.)

Well do you?

I do. Twice.

maybe the point is that people are wrongly assuming they are native english speakers?

and the example given by the OP was an american. 'nuff said