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| Americans are "open" people and here I feel that the people are closed off. | |
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Here in Europe,
"loud" will be the adjective more often used rather than
"open", so it's really down to cultural differences.
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| I feel like every time I speak High German ( with my Accent) they want to speak back to me in English. | |
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I've found there's a few reasons for this, most of which have already been cited here, such as English being a far more useful language here, career-wise, so it's in their interests to practice it, whenever they have a chance, with a native speaker. High German is also, ultimately, a foreign language for the Swiss, that they were forced to learn in school, so there's probably a bit of negative association with it (much like your average Irishman will have for Irish Gaelic after 12 years of schooling in it).
And you have to ask yourself; is their English better than my German? If so, it probably makes sense to communicate in the former, even if it doesn't help you learn the language.
Personally I just respond in German in such situations, ignoring the fact they're speaking in English, until they get the message - but yes, it makes learning German (or even knowing what to learn) a much slower process.
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| I have rarely (if ever) met a German who speaks or even tries to speak Swiss-German. | |
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Germans, unless Swabian, have a problem with Swiss German when they move over here. It comes out of the subconscious assumption that Switzerland should be like Germany because they speak 'German'. The Germans are not alone in this - how many Americans are shocked to find that the UK is culturally very different to the US and vice versa, despite sharing the same language?
However, Germans being Germans, do tend to presume that the German way of doing something must me the only correct way, so they tend to look down on Swiss German as some feeble minded dialect - I've heard it called a
Krüppelsprache in the past and have been told that it 'hurts' their ears to hear it.
Given this, if they do stay here long enough, they do seem to get used to it and have known a few who have learned to speak it and even admit to it having grown on them.