
Le Bolze: Switzerland's Fifth Language - MiriamWeiner
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190422-the-swiss-language-that-few-know
======
pjmlp
As someone that has had the pleasure of living in Switzerland, I would rather
say that Le Bolze would be sixth language.

Given that English, although not an official language, is what gets used by
most nationals across language borders, given that many of them don´t bother
to practice the other languages beyond what is required in school.

I always found ironic that I can switch easier across German, French and
Italian than most of my Swiss friends.

~~~
rscho
Yeah and how most swiss youngsters will now switch to English instead of
national languages when only crossing the röstigraben.

A bit depressing if you ask me. Yet, here we are talking to each other in the
5th national language on an American website ;)

~~~
hocuspocus
I grew up in Geneva, and I blame this on way German is taught over here.

What you learn in middle-school is fairly casual, but it doesn't go very deep.
Then high-school switches to a more academic approach even though you're still
lacking conversational skills. While I loved reading Zweig or Kafka, this was
an extremely inefficient way to teach me the language. I'd have had a lot more
fun focusing on _speaking_ in German (and Swiss German). It might have been a
little hard back then, but nowadays it'd be fairly trivial to have regular
videochat sessions between students on both sides of the language border.

English is a lot easier. First, whether you want it or not, you'll get
exposure and interaction, especially in a city like Geneva. The learning curve
is a lot less steep as well. I could read proper, non-simplified books after
only 2 years of high-school classes.

I believe some cantons are doing better (Fribourg, Bern, maybe Jura and
Valais). But nothing beats the system in Luxembourg where a good chunk of
classes are taught in German during middle-school, then French in high-school.

~~~
bwanab
I lived and worked in Geneva for a couple of years as an older adult. While I
went to the trouble of learning written and spoken French (which I love as a
language), I was really surprised at how little I ever required it in everyday
activities.

BTW, I really loved Switzerland and Geneva in particular.

------
ThePadawan
German national, Swiss resident of 10 years here.

The audio sample is pretty understandable. Obviously the speaker took great
care to enunciate clearly for the recording, so he sounds like he speaks very
understandable Swiss German with a lot of French vocabulary thrown in. Like a
French exchange student or the like.

~~~
smoe
As a Swiss I'm quite puzzled why the author thinks it is another language. The
audio sample disproves the claim in the article that even with full command of
French and Swiss-German, you can't understand it. Sure, it can be hard to
follow, but the same is true for other dialects in the country.

I think given the title, "the Swiss language that few know", they should have
picked Romansh. The fourth official language of Switzerland that got
completely overlooked by the article. A descendant language of the spoken
Latin language of the Roman Empire. Haven't met many people around the world
who have heard of it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElfJX-4yET0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElfJX-4yET0)

~~~
andimm
To be fair, the article mentions Romansh and links to another article only
about our fourth language[0]

I agree the sample is not difficult to understand as a nativ Swiss-German
speaker. Only thing that comes to mind is that it's a Bernese (?) Swiss-German
dialect which is not always easy to understand for 'proper' German speakers.

But in my opinion almost every single dialect in Switzerland has it's own
specific words and almost every canton has it's own dialect so I wouldn't call
them a language.

[0] [http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180627-switzerlands-
myster...](http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180627-switzerlands-mysterious-
fourth-language)

~~~
folli
The article explicitly mentions St. Moritz (which you could call the epicenter
of romansh) as a german speaking town.

~~~
andimm
That example raised my eyebrow as well while reading.

My guess is, that it's be most famous example city for the eastern parts,
although for British people Klosters would be a known alternative as well,
their cable car booth is name "Prince of Wales" and in the Prättigau they
rarely speak Romansh

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anon77887
I find it fascinating how mixing vocabulary and grammatical rules from two
different languages can create something which is not understandable by
speakers of only one of those language, especially when spoken fast.

In my circle of friends/family we're all bilingual french/english, so when
speaking to eachother we tend to speak with a mix of both while conserving
proper British and French prononciation. Sometimes conjugating English verbs
in French and vice-versa. A normal sentence would be: "Je book a table et on
se voit downtown". In an isolated society it would probably evolve into a
creole, but our little pidgin will certainly die with us.

~~~
jlg23
I do the same when I have to converse in 2 or more languages daily.

"On a besoin a room fuer zwei Personen por tres noches!" \-- me to the
housekeeper in the Dominican Republic (she did not understand it, but we had a
good laugh)

~~~
goodcanadian
I love the fact that I can understand that even though I consider myself
largely monolingual. The only word I had to look up was zwei though it is
clear from context that it is a number.

------
vincent-toups
I lived in the Alsace region of France for awhile and there is a local dialect
of German/French there called Alsatian. We used to ride our bikes down the
Levee to a village called Le Wantzeneau and get the local version of Pizza
from a food truck.

The language is, as I've suggested, a weird combination of both French and
German, and it seems to be spoken through the nose somewhat. It reminded me a
lot of Cajun French, which I heard a lot of as a kid.

I'm really for maintaining regional languages. I missed out on a Cajun French
revival as a kid but I'm planning on sending my son down for immersion camp.

In an era where economies of scale are an overwhelming pressure on culture,
maintaining a region's own weird language is kind of rebellion. It calls to
mind the Cajun folk hero Dudley LeBlanc who skirted FDA regulation on his
bullshit patent medicine (itself merely a way of bypassing the prohibition on
alcohol sales) by advertising it on local Cajun French radio stations (which
regulators had trouble understanding). Speaking multiple languages is anti-
authoritarian!

------
gpvos
Somewhat similar: Citéduits, a nearly extinct German-Dutch mixed language
spoken in the mining town of Eisden, Belgium:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoJGWUzjtd4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoJGWUzjtd4)
.

------
Udik
tl;dr; in the historical city center of Fribourg, at the border between French
and German speaking Switzerland, there are still a few speakers of a dialect
originated in the 19th century that adds some French lexicon to the Swiss
German dialect.

~~~
Fnoord
That's what I was thinking as well: a _dialect_. This isn't a language. There
are _so_ many dialects in The Netherlands and Belgium, with different
ancestors. Together with their accent they are part of a local region's
history. However, the The Netherlands has only 2 official languages: Dutch and
Frisian. The Frisian language is also an official language in Germany, and its
spoken also in Denmark. See [1]. Zeelandic, however, spoken in the province of
Zeeland (in the south-west of The Netherlands) is a dialect. It isn't an
officially recognized language. The point being: this isn't unique to
Switzerland. What is unique to Switzerland is it having _four_ official
languages (German, French, Italian, Romansh), none of which is spoken _mainly
in Switzerland_. Nowadays, due to migration and globalization, a country
contains many spoken and written languages anyway. For example, in the city of
Zaandam there is a large Portuguese community.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages)

------
madshiva
There's plenty of other language in each canton (country subdivision). There
would be like 20 languages at least if we count each modification of German,
French, or Italien, each part of the canton use specific argot. I would not
count Bolze has a language because of that. Like patois vaudois, patois
fribourgeois, valaisan, etc.

