Languages in Switzerland
The long-established population of Switzerland has one of the national languages German , French , Italian or Romansh as their mother tongue .
Legal basis
In the Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation (BV) the following four official languages are set out at federal level:
- German
- French
- Italian
- Romansh
Romansh is only considered the official language of the federal government if it is used when communicating with people who speak Romansh. These citizens therefore have the right to contact the federal administration in their mother tongue and also to receive an answer in Romansh.
In addition to their mother tongue , many Swiss speak one, sometimes two, national languages. English is taught as a compulsory foreign language in schools. Only a few Swiss speak all four national languages.
At canton and commune level , each canton - depending on the canton, even each commune - can determine which language is to be the official language. The federal constitution does not define the language areas of Switzerland. Article 70 paragraph 2 gives the cantons the power to determine their official languages. Anyone who moves from another language part of the country has no right to communicate with the new cantonal and communal authorities in their native language (principle of territoriality ).
Among the multilingual cantons, only Bern and Valais have spatially defined the language areas. The multilingual canton of Friborg assigns the regulation of the official language to the municipalities. According to cantonal law, the municipalities of Biel / Bienne , Evilard / Leubringen and Courtepin are bilingual at the interface between French and German. Some other municipalities provide bilingual services, for example the city of Freiburg / Friborg and seven municipalities in the Murten / Morat school district offer school lessons in both cantonal languages, and certain official publications also appear in the respective minority language.
The cantons of Ticino and Jura define themselves as belonging entirely to the Italian and French language areas, although one municipality each ( Bosco / Gurin or Ederswiler ) has a German-speaking majority.
The canton of Graubünden is the only canton in the country to have three official languages: German, Romansh and Italian. At the same time, it is the only canton in which Romansh is the official language at canton level. According to Art. 16 of the Grisons Language Act of 2006, municipalities in which at least 40% of the residents speak the ancestral idiom are officially monolingual, and municipalities in which at least 20% speak the ancestral idiom are officially bilingual. Often municipalities are officially defined as Romansh-speaking, but German dominates as the lingua franca. This means that Romansh is the administrative and school language, but in everyday life many people still speak Swiss German .
distribution
German
German is the most common mother tongue and lingua franca in Switzerland. As such, 65.6 percent of the country's residents and 73.3 percent of the Swiss speak it (as of 2010). 17 of the 26 cantons are monolingual German; another three are officially French-German bilingualism: Bern (with a German majority), Freiburg and Valais (with a French majority). In addition, German is the official language in Graubünden, alongside Italian and Romansh. In the cantons of Ticino and Jura there is one German-speaking municipality each, so that only in the cantons of Neuchâtel, Vaud and Geneva are there no traditional German-speaking minorities. The native population in German-speaking Switzerland speaks one of the many Swiss-German dialects of Alemannic as their mother tongue and in everyday life . Samnaun is an exception , where a southern Bavarian dialect is spoken. Swiss Standard German is mainly used as a written language and is related to the dialect in a diglossia relationship . H. there is no smooth transition between standard German and dialect. According to sample surveys, 87% of the population in German-speaking Switzerland spoke Swiss German on a daily basis in 2014, and 79% within the family in 2018. In contrast, 12% of residents in German-speaking Switzerland only use Standard German for everyday communication (as of 2014). The relative frequency of Swiss German as a family language varies, however, depending on the degree of urbanization: In the canton of Basel-Stadt, 64% of residents aged 15 and over speak dialect at home, while in Bern and Zurich 79% and 72%, respectively, and around 90% in Uri and Appenzell Innerrhoden speak dialect in the family. The variation according to the degree of urbanization is, however, significantly less than that according to nationality; 96% of the residents of German-speaking Switzerland with Swiss citizenship state that they speak a Swiss-German dialect in everyday life. For citizens of other states in the same area, however, this value is 54%.
The language border between German and French is jokingly referred to as the " Röstigraben ".
French and Franco-Provencal
French is spoken by the population in western Switzerland (by 22.8 percent of the population of Switzerland and by 23.4 percent of the Swiss; as of 2010). The predominantly French part of the country is often called Romandie , Suisse romande or Welschland, in German publications mostly French (speaking) Switzerland . Four cantons are monolingual in French: Geneva (Genève), Jura (except for the German-speaking municipality of Ederswiler ), Neuchâtel (Neuchâtel) and Vaud (Vaud). Three other cantons are officially bilingual: Bern, with a German-speaking majority population, and Freiburg (Friborg) and Wallis (Valais), where French is predominant. The dialectal situation in French-speaking Switzerland differs significantly from that of German-speaking Switzerland and reflects the (largely negative) French attitude towards dialects and regional languages.
Up until the 19th century, Franco-Provencal dialects were predominantly spoken in French-speaking Switzerland, except in the large cities and with the exception of what is now the canton of Jura . They are now largely extinct or have been replaced by regional forms of the high French. In cities such as Geneva, French had prevailed as a colloquial language against the old Franco-Provençal dialects since the 17th century. Patois is only occasionally used in everyday life by the elderly in parts of the canton of Friborg and especially in Lower Valais; In the Valais mountain community of Evolène , the local dialect is sometimes used as a colloquial language. In many regions of French-speaking Switzerland there are cultural associations that are committed to the continued existence of the patois. The vocabulary of the old dialects is documented in the Glossaire des patois de la Suisse romande . The number of active patois speakers has never been recorded.
The Swiss Federal Council decided on the official recognition of Franco-Provencal and Franc-Comtois , the regional dialect in the Jura, as minority languages on December 7, 2018 in Switzerland's seventh report on the implementation of the Council of Europe's European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . In 2008, the cantonal government of Valais set up a Conseil du patois to promote the Franco-Provençal dialects.
Italian
Italian is spoken by the people in Ticino (Ticino) and four southern valleys ( Misox , Calancatal , Bergell , Puschlav and the municipality of Bivio ) in the canton of Graubünden, in Italian-speaking Switzerland (8.4 percent of the inhabitants of Switzerland and 6, 1 percent of the Swiss; as of 2010). Italian is the official language in the cantons mentioned. The federal government actively promotes the language. The inhabitants of the four Italian-speaking southern valleys, the Italian Graubünden, see themselves as a minority in the language minority of Italian-speaking Switzerland, as Italian-speaking Switzerland is dominated by Ticino. Most of the Italian-speaking population is made up of immigrants from Italy and their descendants, which explains the percentage increase in the decades after the end of the Second World War. They are spread across the whole country. The dialects spoken in Ticino and the southern valleys of Graubünden belong to Lombard , which, along with other northern Italian dialect groups , is counted as Galloital . According to the 2000 census, slightly more than half of the family's population in the Italian-speaking area of Switzerland used either exclusively or partially the local dialect. Lombardic is not legally recognized as a language in Switzerland as a whole or in the cantons of Ticino and Graubünden; the corresponding areas are undifferentiated as being Italian-speaking.
Romansh
Romansh is spoken genuinely in Graubünden, but also to a considerable proportion in many municipalities in German-speaking Switzerland due to emigration (0.6 percent of the population in Switzerland; 0.7 percent of the Swiss; as of 2010). Most Romansh are at least bilingual and speak Romansh in addition to their mother tongue Grisons German and High German .
Other languages
Jenisch is based on the German and in Switzerland on Swiss dialects, characterized by vocabulary share, especially from Yiddish and Romani internal group language Jenischen that is not used in trade with the rest of the population. The number of speakers is not recorded in Switzerland. In official statements made by Switzerland, the total number of Travelers is (gens du voyage) with Swiss citizenship, under which the Jenischen next to a smaller number of Sinti and Manouche and Roma make up the vast majority, to 30,000 or even neglecting the not - those groups estimated the number of Yeniche themselves at 30,000–35,000. This corresponds to approximately 0.5 percent of the total Swiss population. As part of the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (1997), Switzerland recognized Yenish as a non-territorial language of Switzerland and on several occasions affirmed the Yenish claim to measures to promote their language. Because many Yeniche value the secret language character of their language, there has so far been no agreement among them about suitable funding measures. The Radgenossenschaft der Landstrasse , the leading umbrella organization in cooperation with the government, rejects all measures that aim to open up the language “to other cultures”.
Yiddish , more precisely West Yiddish , has had atraditionin Switzerland that has been limited to the Surbtal villages of Lengnau and Endingen since the 18th centuryand endedin the 1990s with the death of the last speakers of the Surbtal dialect. East Yiddish has a more recent traditionin the city of Zurich , where it isspokenby some of the members of the ultra-Orthodox community . In the understanding of Switzerland, Yiddish, as the language of Swiss Jews, also falls under the concept of minority languages without a territory. However, the Swiss Association of Israelites has issued a statement against funding measures.
The sign languages are living in Switzerland about 10,000 people dominated more or less. In Switzerland, the German-speaking Swiss sign language , the Langue des signes Suisse romande (western Swiss sign language) and the Lingua dei segni della Svizzera italiana (Ticino sign language) are used by the deaf as their mother tongue and by interpreters, relatives and others as a second language. Sign language is not recognized at state level, while sign language is recognized at cantonal level in the canton of Geneva ( Art. 16 of the Geneva Constitution). Art. 12 of the Zurich Constitution declares that sign languages are included under the freedom of speech.
For most Swiss people, English is the second foreign language alongside German or French. Individual Swiss-German cantons have started to teach English as the first foreign language in schools, i.e. not to start with French. In the German-speaking canton of Uri , Italian is taught as the first foreign language due to its proximity to the canton of Ticino.
Immigrants, especially from the second generation (called secondo or seconda ), are mostly multilingual. In summary, the languages of the immigrants with 9 percent of the population (as of 2000) are more widespread than the Italian and Rhaeto-Romanic national languages. The largest language group is Serbo-Croatian with 1.5 percent; English is the main language for one percent of the population. These unofficial languages of Switzerland are distributed throughout the country, concentrated in the larger cities. In addition, extremely rare languages are used in Switzerland, such as B. Aramaic , this Semitic language is spoken by around 10,000 Christian Assyrians ( Suryoye ) in Switzerland.
historical development
After a slight increase during the world wars and in the post-war period until the 1970s, there has been a slight tendency in recent years that German has lost something, while French was able to expand its share a little, Romansh lost and that Italian remained essentially constant. The language border between German and French has shifted slightly to the east in the last few decades. Probably the strongest change occurred in the canton of Graubünden, where German is increasingly displacing Romansh. It is often the case that the children almost exclusively speak German and only partially understand the Romansh of the elderly. In Italian-speaking Ticino, too, especially in the lakeside communities, there are fears that German could become a dominant language in the future.
The most striking trend is the steady increase in non-national languages, which meanwhile account for significantly more than Italian and Romansh combined, which is reflected in a lower proportion of German in relation to the language distribution of the entire resident population in Switzerland.
The percentages of languages according to the federal census of the Federal Statistical Office are distributed as follows in Switzerland (several languages could be specified in 2010):
| year | German | French and Franco-Provencal |
Italian and Lombard |
Romansh | Non-national languages | |||||
| Residential population |
Swiss | Residential population |
Swiss | Residential population |
Swiss | Residential population |
Swiss | Residential population |
Swiss | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 65.6 | 73.3 | 22.8 | 23.4 | 8.4 | 6.1 | 0.6 | 0.7 | 8.7 | 8.5 |
| 2000 | 63.7 | 72.5 | 20.4 | 21.0 | 6.5 | 4.3 | 0.5 | 0.6 | 9.0 | 1.6 |
| 1990 | 63.6 | 73.4 | 19.2 | 20.5 | 7.6 | 4.1 | 0.6 | 0.7 | 8.9 | 1.3 |
| 1980 | 65.0 | 73.5 | 18.4 | 20.1 | 9.8 | 4.5 | 0.8 | 0.9 | 6.0 | 1.0 |
| 1970 | 64.9 | 74.5 | 18.1 | 20.1 | 11.9 | 4.0 | 0.8 | 1.0 | 4.3 | 0.4 |
| 1960 | 69.4 | 74.4 | 18.9 | 20.2 | 9.5 | 4.1 | 0.9 | 1.0 | 1.4 | 0.3 |
| 1950 | 72.1 | 74.2 | 20.3 | 20.6 | 5.9 | 4.0 | 1.0 | 1.1 | 0.7 | 0.2 |
| 1941 | 72.6 | 73.9 | 20.7 | 20.9 | 5.2 | 3.9 | 1.1 | 1.1 | 0.4 | 0.2 |
| 1930 | 71.9 | 73.7 | 20.4 | 21.0 | 6.0 | 4.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 0.6 | 0.1 |
| 1920 | 70.9 | 73.0 | 21.3 | 21.7 | 6.1 | 4.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 0.6 | 0.1 |
| 1910 | 69.1 | 72.7 | 21.1 | 22.1 | 8.1 | 3.9 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 0.6 | 0.1 |
Non-national languages
Proportion of the 15 most common non-national languages as a percentage and number of the resident population in 2000
| language | percent | Number of speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Serbian / Croatian | 1.4% | 103,350 |
| Albanian | 1.3% | 94,937 |
| Portuguese | 1.2% | 89,527 |
| Spanish | 1.1% | 77,506 |
| English | 1.0% | 73'425 |
| Turkish | 0.6% | 44,523 |
| Tamil | 0.3% | 21,816 |
| Arabic | 0.2% | 14,345 |
| Dutch | 0.2% | 11,840 |
| Russian | 0.1% | 9,003 |
| Chinese | 0.1% | 8,279 |
| Thai | 0.1% | 7,569 |
| Kurdish | 0.1% | 7,531 |
| Macedonian | 0.1% | 6'415 |
| In total | 570,066 |
See also
- Swiss Idioticon
- Linguistic Atlas of German-speaking Switzerland
- Glossaire des patois de la Suisse romande
- Vocabolario dei dialetti della Svizzera italiana
- Dicziunari Rumantsch Grischun
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 ; on German: pp. 58–76, on French: pp. 76–86, on Italian: pp. 86–90, on Romansh: pp. 90–94).
- Hans Bickel , Robert Schläpfer (Ed.): The four-language Switzerland. 2nd, revised edition. Sauerländer, Aarau 2000 (Sprachlandschaft 25 series), ISBN 3-7941-3696-9 .
- Norbert Furrer: Forty-speaking Switzerland, language contacts and multilingualism in pre-industrial Switzerland (15th – 19th centuries) . 2 volumes, Chronos, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-0340-0521-0 .
- Stefan Hess : The myth of the four national languages. Once there were more than just four languages - how it came about that Switzerland has been officially four languages since 1938 . In: Basler Zeitung, September 20, 2011, pp. 35, 37.
- Georges Lüdi: Multilingualism. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Kurt Meyer : Swiss Dictionary. That's what we say in Switzerland . Huber, Frauenfeld 2006, ISBN 3-7193-1382-4 .
- Jean Widmer u. a .: The Swiss linguistic diversity in public discourse. A socio-historical analysis of the transformations of the language orders from 1848 to 2000 . Lang, Bern 2004, ISBN 3-03910-208-7 .
- Karl Wüst u. a .: Grüezi, Salaam, Ciao. Reports from multilingual Switzerland . Orell Füssli, Zurich 2006, ISBN 3-280-06076-1 .
Web links
- Maps from the Federal Statistical Office on the spread of languages in Switzerland based on the 1990 and 2000 censuses
- swiss-linguistics.com - information portal for current linguistic research in Switzerland
Individual evidence
- ↑ Art. 70 , Para. 1 of the Federal Constitution of Switzerland: “The official languages of the Confederation are German, French and Italian. When dealing with people in Romansh, Romansh is also the official language of the federal government. "
- ^ Marc Tribelhorn: Language limit. Military and au pair, goodbye! In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . 18th July 2016.
- ↑ Notre école. In: Website of the primary school Murten / Morat.
- ^ Daniel speaker: Language border: The strengthening of the Romands. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from August 12, 2016
- ^ Constitution of the Canton of Graubünden from September 14, 2003. Accessed on November 23, 2019 .
- ↑ Language law of the Canton of Graubünden (SpG) of October 19, 2006 (PDF; 273 kB).
- ↑ a b c d e f Permanent resident population aged 15 and over according to main language (s) ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (XLS; 102 kB). In: Federal Statistical Office. ( Memento of the original from January 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c Federal Statistical Office: Swiss German and Standard German in Switzerland - Analysis of data from the survey on language, religion and culture 2014 | Publication . In: Federal Statistical Office . ( admin.ch [accessed December 1, 2018]).
- ↑ Federal Statistical Office: Permanent resident population aged 15 and over according to the languages spoken at home and language area - 2018 | Table. January 30, 2020, accessed March 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Federal Statistical Office: Languages spoken at home by canton - 2018 | Table. January 30, 2020, accessed March 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Federal Council recognizes Franco Provençal as a minority language, nau.ch. accessed on June 27, 2020.
- ↑ Peter Jankovsky: Italian federations: The fourth minority. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from January 8, 2017.
- ↑ Initial report du Gouvernement suisse sur la mise en œuvre de la Convention-cadre du Conseil de l'Europe pour la protection des minorités nationales. In humanrights.ch (April 2001), No. 24, p. 13, No. 96, p. 35 (PDF; 474 kB); Federal Council report on the situation of travelers in Switzerland ( memento of the original dated July 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 581 kB). In: Federal Office for Culture, October 2006, Part I, 1.2, p. 5 f .; Second report by Switzerland on the implementation of the Framework Convention of the Council of Europe for the Protection of National Minorities , No. 30, January 2007, p. 25 f.
- ↑ European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Third report from Switzerland ( Memento of the original from July 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.25 MB). In: Federal Office for Culture, May 2006, 4, p. 22.
- ↑ Second Swiss report on the implementation of the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, No. 69, January 2007, p. 49 f.
- ↑ Jürg Fleischer : West Yiddish in Switzerland and Southwest Germany. Sound recordings and texts on Surbtaler and Hegauer Yiddish (= supplements to the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry. Volume 4). Niemeyer, Tübingen 2005; Florence Guggenheim-Grünberg : Surbtaler Yiddish: Endingen and Lengnau. Appendix: Yiddish language samples from Alsace and Baden (= Swiss dialects in sound and text. Issue 1, German-speaking Switzerland. Issue 4). Huber, Frauenfeld 1966; also Linus Spuler: A Yiddish island in Switzerland. In: Sprachspiegel . Volume 20, 1964, No. 5, pp. 134-137; Marcel Amrein: Shtetl in deep sleep. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , December 21, 2013.
- ↑ European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Second report from Switzerland ( memento of the original from July 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 604 kB). In: Federal Office for Culture 2002, No. 4, p. 12 f.
- ↑ Philipp Haag: Assyrer: The forgotten people. Retrieved April 11, 2020 .
- ↑ Katharina Haab, Claudio Bolzman, Andrea Kugler, Özcan Yılmaz: Diaspora and migrant communities from Turkey in Switzerland . Ed .: Federal Office for Migration. Bern-Wabern 2010.
- ↑ Georges Lüdi, Iwar Werlen: Federal Population Census 2000. Language landscape in Switzerland (PDF; 2.68 MB). In: Federal Statistical Office ( Memento of the original dated November 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , April 2005.
