How Different are Swiss German and Standard German?

In this video I investigate the differences between Swiss German dialects (focusing on the Zurich dialect) with Standard German.

Special thanks to Danilo for his Swiss German samples, and Johannes for his Standard German samples.

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The following images are used under Creative Commons Share Alike license:

Sources include:

00:00 General info about Swiss German
01:38 Differences in vocabulary
03:17 Differences in pronunciation
05:23 Differences in grammar
08:27 Sentence breakdowns
11:03 Closing comments
11:44 The Question of the Day

[Langfocus]

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[henning]

I am a German native speaker and I was once in a restaurant in Italy where Swiss people were sitting at another table. It took me ten minutes to realize that they were actually speaking German.

[annate]

In my experience as a German who traveled to Zürich once: the Swiss can understand and communicate with us seamlessly, but as soon as they switch back to dialect we have like a 10% clue of what they're saying, especially when they're speaking fast. It's a really funny experience.

[AnOtherChoosenOne]

In Switzerland, they apparently use the word "schmecken" for both taste and smell. In Germany we say schmecken for tasting and riechen for smelling things.
So you can imagine my surprise/ confusion when my Swiss friend came for a visit and told me that he doesn't like the taste of my hand soap...

[Krackerlack]

me: "yay I'm finally starting to learn the ropes of german"
swiss german: *grüezi*

[untruelie]

I'm from Saxony; I (sometimes) understand neither northern nor southern dialects. :D
How Northerners sounds to me: "Schjo, de lüdde Rrrochn hus de dwarß übbäh"
How Bavarians/Austrians sound to me: "Jaa, I hobs nets ä o a üa ghobt net was senn derfn hoam"
How Swiss people sound to me:

[maxbanziger]

Let's imagine the following scenario: You are Swiss and are studying Germanics at a Swiss university. The professor is also Swiss. The lecture is held in Standard German. If you went to see the professor after the lecture and spoke to him in Standard German, he would think you've gone mad.

[prismaticc_abyss]

The really confusing part is that most germans might speak their dialect and pronounce things their way but when typing online casually they will still use the standard spelling, only pronounce it differently when read, while Swiss speakers tend to write thing the way they sound in their dialect which results in an unreadable mess for any standard german speaker

[fangornthewise]

As a Native Portuguese speaker, the differences between Swiss German and Std German seem as big as the differences between Portuguese and Italian. You can kinda tell they were once the same language but no way you're having a complex conversation without some knowledge in the other language.
Keep in mind Portugal and Italy don't even share borders so this dramatic difference between Switzerland and Germany is quite surprising.
Portuguese and Spanish are much more similar in comparison.

[bjarkiorarson]

Icelander here. I started learning German when I was 14 years old and kept on going until I was 20. Then I studied it at university for my BA-degree for three/four years (took Danish as a minor) and did one year as an exchange student in Salzburg in Austria. Right now I'm almost 31 years old and have been living in Berlin for almost three years, my job requires me to speak German and people here very often don't recognize that I'm not even German until I tell them. So German is obviously a big part of my life, as are languages in general, including the many different dialects and variations of any given language. When I decided to go abroad for my exchange period I specifically decided that "I will not go to Switzerland(!)", because I wanted to learn "real German" XD I then decided to go to Austria instead, because my German was very good at that time, and I wanted to learn a different version and so Bavaria/Austria was the go-to place for that. There at least I learned to understand Austrian/Bavarian accents and a bit of their dialects, but Switzerland was still an absolute "Terra Incognita" for me. In short: I'm a foreigner who speaks almost perfect German who knows a lot about the different dialects of German (add maybe even Dutch and Luxembourgish into the mix). I can understand some Swiss German and get what their talking about, but boy is it still a headache!
I think my biggest WTF-moment with Swiss German was when I was driving around in Iceland with a friend of mine from Switzerland. We always spoke standard German with each other, she had a Swiss accent but we fully understood each other. She even taught me about the relative clause marker "wo", which even she found a bit weird XD Later on we stopped by a cliff formation called "Kirkja" in Icelandic (literally means "Church"). I point at the sign and say "Das ist die Kirche", and then I asked her how she would say "Kirche" in her dialect (she's from Zürich), expecting something like "chirche". Then she said "Uh! Chille!" I was stunned and the only thing that came out of my mouth was "WAS?!" XD I was so "shocked" because of this that I actually spent weeks and maybe a couple of months looking up why they say that in Switzerland including some other varieties.
I think someone wrote it here as well, but I sometimes understand Dutch better than Swiss German :D

I'll e-mail a cookie to anyone actually read this to the end.

[AdrianvonZiegler]

Man that was so funny to watch as a native Zürcher. xD Ja Schwiizerdütsch isch scho e komischi Sprach. Mega cools Video, danke villmal!

[RufftaMan]

As a Swiss native speaker, seeing the language analyzed like this makes it seem super weird. Haha..

[sophiesonozaki]

I’m a German and speak High German and spoken Swiss German is not understandable for me. But when I spoke to Swiss people they always switched to “normal” German. There still were some difficulties because of the different words sometimes but it was incredible how they van change their way of speaking!

[Tubemax]

To respond to your question, from a Swiss german speaker's perspective: we usually, if not always speak in dialect among other Swiss germans, even if they speak a different dialect. This is because even though Swiss dialects are fairly different from each other, we learn to understand them growing up, and they are also pretty co-intelligible, except for maybe the dialect from Wallis and a few others. In other words, a person from Bern and a person from Zurich will speak in their respective dialects and understand each other almost perfectly.

[jorgeh.r]

In case nobody has told you lately, your work is not underapreciated. Please never stop posting, your videos are of amazing quality in content and in entertainment.

[jarvijarvson]

Congratulations, this is a very well-researched video! Greetings from Switzerland.

[SaG]

German native speaker here. Back in the 90s I was studying French in Tours at a university institute that attracts students from all over the world. The year I was there, I had a ton of Swiss-German speakers in my class and, naturally, started to hang out with them. The first couple of weeks, it was like being with a group speaking a foreign language when I hung out with them. They actually had to dumb down their Swiss "accents" and switch to high German for my benefit. After a while, I picked up on things and was able to follow along more easily when they were talking to each other. And yet... it still felt almost like a foreign language to me and not like a dialect. It's not as foreign to my ear as, say, Dutch, but it's not very far off.

[robthetraveler]

Langfocus's videos are seriously some of the most informative (and informed), well-constructed, and highbrow stuff on YouTube.

[weirdowhisper]

8:00 *"Der Freund, mit dem ich immer saufen gehe"* 😂 I like the almost innocent appearance of 'go drinking' when the proper translation of 'saufen gehen' is actually 'go boozing', i.e. till you're drunk. XD

[SeeTv.]

As a swiss german speaker in most cases it isn't a problem at all to communicate with people who speak different swiss german dialect. But when speaking with people from Germany of course high german is used.