Vive la venge(a)nce!

et oui mon vieux, la vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid

Délicieux, mon ami!

Schadenfreude?

Anglophones only demand justice

Yum Yum!
Hoppy, I promise you it'll taste just like la galette des rois

Languages evolve as cultures integrate, this can put some at a disadvantage. The traditional Swiss who are conservative do not welcome changes to language, especially if the established order works to their advantage. In the end, if they are not able to impose a return to conventional ways, then they lose out. To me, there needs to be a balance between conventional and new, there must be some flexibility and improvisation. Officially the language may stay the same, but unofficially it will change and change produces innovation; which is what societies need in order to move forward.

They can introduce all the laws they want but it will not stop the society evoloving, if a society stops evolving it is doomed.

English has standard and non- standard forms, they feed each other.

Perhaps one day the Swiss teens will develop an equivalent to the language their English peers now have (if they are not already):





http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...icle757184.ece

Reads beautiful in French, but that saying is best in the original Klingon!

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Yes & No. Numerically, you can compare London to all of Switzerland, but in a social context, it does not really work. Except that certain quarters of Zurich, Geneva and Basel have a share of non -Euro immigrants well comparable to many quarters of London


Sure, the film nicely shows the enormous problems with those artificial boring and "empty" outer-cities (Cités Satellite) in the Banlieues of large French cities. It was reported in intelligent newspapers like Libération and LeMonde that the "native" youngsters in these Cités Satellite are not really better off than "the others".




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Interesting is to see that immigrants from non-Euro countries tend to integrate rather better than those from ex-Yugoslavia. And this means simply that ex-Yugoslavia exported some of its problems. At the other hand, let's be fair. Switzerland needed the workers from Yugoslavia, but people came along and brought their problems with them

Personal happiness IS essential. But once again, most immigrants are NOT treated as second-class citizens, at least not in general.




Mrs Thatcher for many years, in regard to her economic wisdoms, was the Icon of the FDP. Her slightly xenophobe leanings however were vastly admired by the SVPler

> Most Swiss businessmen are PRO competition
> Most Swiss public administrators however are anti-competition
> Anti-EU ? You have to realize that the Bilateral way brought the EU integration the businessmen wanted to have. Whatever some EU chaps declare, there right at present is no alternative to the continuation of the Bilaterals
> Most Swiss businessmen do NOT "stick" to speaking Swiss-German but in case it is suitable shift to High-German, English, French and in many cases also other languages. The ability to shift into other languages exactly is the reason for the success of the Swiss businessmen
> However, if a foreigner has some command of the dialect, he/she will become an "insider" relatively easily. And do not forget that many companies in Geneva, Lugano, etc are "under Swiss-German management" which means that the "management-floor" speaks Swiss German. This may not be nice but it is fact

Sure, already in the Kindergarten where they fight for the Lebensraum

You should not mix things up. Many otherwise exceedingly traditional folks in Switzerland are very open for changes in regard to language. Imagine that the daughter of Mr Blocher is married to the son of a Lombardia industrialist ! Mr Blocher, in order to speak with that side of his wider family has aquired quite some ability in Italian

Most languages on earth have standard and non-standard forms.

Swiss teens ? Ever listened to how they talk ? Sure, English words are "Helvetized". Just like the verb "Dancing" became a noun here. Just like "City" here is the equivalent to Downtown. French made its inroads into German speaking Switzerland between 1700 and 1910, but English started to do so in the 1940ies, and Italian did so since about 1880.

I don't know the context of how Swiss using the word "dancing", but that form of a verb can be and is considered a noun. It's called a gerund and the example is in the following sentence:

"Dancing is a beautiful art."

I'm not surprised English has infiltrated Swiss vocabluary. Thanks for the info!

A "Dancing" in Switzerland is a place where people are dancing. Usually a kind of bar-restaurant. And there of course is the owner of the dancing. No, it is not a "Gerund" and has its employees etc.

Wollishofener has an answer to everything very active indeed

The Swiss have owned dancing, one of my greatest pleasure in life has been owned by the Swiss? I am doomed- doomed

I really have to take Wollishoffner for a walk around London, I am sure that his eyes will pop at the mixture of nationalities, more than I have see anywhere else in the world including NY. At the last count there were over 270 nationalities in London. London is linguistically the most diverse capital in the world with over 250 languages. Officially, more than 1/4 of the population is from an alternative ethnic background, in fact I would say that these figures are outdated in the last two years, there has been a massive influx of foreign nationalities into London. Many Poles left but others took their place.

I found it truly chaotic but inspiring, so many different tastes, smells, art, colours, fashion. I asked my family if they did not feel swamped, they said -No- they seem to create their own markets. My brother took me to the new Covent Garden Market- that was a shock, even to me, so many cultures that I had never experienced, but such resourceful and inventive people, they can recycle anything!

I didn't know how the Swiss used "dancing", and you're right---it's not a gerund as in my example, but it is a noun.

Are you giving us a head-up on the test? Will the grammatical use of dancing, as defined in Swiss terms, be on the test?

I hope this law doesn't pass while I'm here because I would have a hard time passing it, but in fairness it doesn't seem like that radical of an idea to require potenial immigrants to be proficient in one of the official languages. It might have adverse economomic effects in the short term, but that is a secondary issue for proponents of this law I suspect.

So it would be bye bye Brady Dougan, who, by the way, flies home to New York EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND. Integrated? I think not.