Swiss French

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Distribution of Franco-Provencal (green), French ( Dialectes d'oïl ) (blue) and Occitan (Dialectes d'oc) (red)

Swiss French is an umbrella term for various dialects of the French language as well as the written and spoken regional French in French-speaking Switzerland . In German-speaking Switzerland , the term Welsch is also used for this .

Historical forms

In the French-speaking part of Switzerland, the patois used to be the common language of everyday life, but is now almost extinct. In most of French-speaking Switzerland, it was a question of Franco-Provencal dialects, whereas in the northern canton of Neuchâtel , in the Bernese Jura and in the canton of Jura it was dialects which (like standard French ) belonged to the Langues d'oïl group .

development

The language change first took place in the Reformed , and in the 19th and 20th centuries also in the Catholic areas. In 1990, 2% of the francophone population in Switzerland spoke and understood patois, in addition to the standard French that is predominant today. Franco-Provencal dialects have survived best in some Valais municipalities such as Evolène , Savièse or Nendaz , while Neuchâtel French is considered extinct. The dialects receive a certain amount of care from patois associations, but also language courses and local newspapers such as the Valais “Nouvelliste”.

Today's Swiss French

By and large, Swiss French corresponds to standard French, so that citizens from neighboring France and French-speaking Swiss (French-speaking countries) can communicate without any problems.

Germanisms and archaisms

Despite the strong normalization in the knows Romandie spoken French some - and regional - peculiarities in pronunciation and vocabulary. In addition to archaisms , many Germanisms are known that are increasingly used, especially along the language borders ( vattre et mouttre instead of père et mère, poutzer instead of nettoyer, bacon instead of lard or joke instead of blague, e.g. in the Bernese and Neuchâtel Jura and in the neighboring ones Expressions often used in Gruyère ). When bilingual Freiburg residents speak French to each other, one can often hear German terms as well. Conversely, Germans sometimes use French terms.

In Switzerland - as in parts of France, Belgium and Québec - "breakfast" is used as déjeuner (instead of petit déjeuner ), "lunch" as dîner (instead of déjeuner ) and "dinner" as souper (instead of dîner ) designated. These are the older names that have been preserved in the fringes of the French-speaking area.

French- speaking people often use the specifically Swiss term Natel for their mobile phone - an acronym for “National Car Phone” - instead of the portable one that is common in France .

Numerals

The numerals "seventy" and "ninety" are - as in Belgium and northeastern France - in the cantons of Geneva , Vaud , Friborg , Valais , Neuchâtel and Jura as well as in the Bernese Jura and in the bilingual city of Biel / Bienne as septante and nonante instead like in France soixante-dix and quatre-vingt-dix . Instead of quatre-vingts "eighty", huitante is used in the cantons of Vaud , Friborg and Valais .

Français fédéral

As français fédéral ("Federal French ") a French is pejoratively referred to in French-speaking Switzerland, which is clearly influenced by German-Swiss. The name comes from the fact that this applies particularly often to official texts of the federal administration , most of which were written in German and then translated into French. The Dictionnaire suisse romand defines français fédéral as «the Germanized (or even wrong) French that is specific to texts written by the central administration or by companies with their headquarters in German-speaking Switzerland; derived from this also the German-speaking or false French of the German-speaking Swiss (and ultimately the French-speaking countries) ».

The français fédéral is an expression of linguistic interference in multilingual Switzerland, which occurs similarly in the relationship between Swiss German and Standard German . It is often the result of a very literal or not very attentive translation from German into French, which means that the sentence structure, argumentation or standing expressions peculiar to German are adopted into French, which is unpleasant for people with French mother tongue. Also false friends among the translation difficulties , which in fédéral français reflected. For example, “wait for” is sometimes incorrectly translated as “attendre sur” (instead of “attendre”), or “protocol” with “protocole” (instead of “procès-verbal”).

The satirists of French -speaking Switzerland like to use the français fédéral - pidgin-like and always presented with a strong Swiss-German accent - to caricature politicians from German-speaking Switzerland. They also indirectly criticize the federal bureaucracy and the disregard for French by the German-speaking majority.

literature

  • Albert Bachmann , Louis Gauchat , Carlo Salvioni , R. P .: Languages ​​and Dialects. In: Geographical Lexicon of Switzerland , Volume V: Switzerland - Tavetsch. Attinger, Neuenburg 1908, pp. 58–94 ( online ; in French: pp. 76–86).
  • Glossaire des patois de la Suisse romande . Attinger, Neuchâtel 1924 ff.
  • William Pierrehumbert: Dictionnaire historique du parler Neuchâtelois et Suisse Romand . Attinger, Neuchâtel 1926.
  • Edmond Pidoux: Le Langage des Romands. Ensemble, Lausanne 1983, 2nd edition ibid. 1984.
  • Joachim Lengert: Regional French in literature. Studies on lexical and grammatical regionalisms of French in western Switzerland . Francke, Bern 1994 (Romanica Helvetica 111), ISBN 3-7720-2047-X .
  • Pierre Knecht, André Thibault: Dictionnaire Suisse Romand. Particularités lexicales du français contemporain . Editions Zoé, Carouge 2004, ISBN 2-88182-508-7 (1st edition 1997).

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article wälsch , Bed. 1aα and 2aα, in: Schweizerisches Idiotikon Vol. XV, Sp. 1584 and 1594 ( digitized version ).
  2. ^ Wulf Müller: On the history of the language of the Suisse romande. In: Swiss German Dictionary. Swiss Idioticon. Report on the year 2002. [Zurich] 2003, pp. 11–24.
  3. ↑ Rolf Dietrich: Boomtown Bulle. In: Schweiz aktuell. SRF , October 10, 2018, accessed on May 11, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Example: Les patois romands reconnus officiellement. Le Nouvelliste, December 7, 2018, accessed May 11, 2019 .
  5. ^ André Thibault, Pierre Knecht: Dictionnaire suisse romand. Particularités lexicales du français contemporain. Zoé, Carouge 1977, ISBN 2-88182-316-5 , pp. 308-310.
  6. ↑ Marinette Matthey, Le français, langue de contact en Suisse romande (PDF; 62 kB), in: GLOTTOPOL, Revue de sociolinguistique en ligne, N ° 2 - Juillet 2003, p. 98. Translation of the quote from French by the author of this article.

Web links

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