Swiss German
Switzerland has four official languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. The distribution is around 60%, 30% and 10% respectively, for German, French and Italian. The fourth language, Romansh, is spoken only by around 30,000 people, but is nevertheless an official language due to historical reasons. Most of cantons mainly speak one of these languages, but there are a few cantons, such as Fribourg, which are bilingual (French and German in Fribourg).
While many people speak English and French in Zurich, it is a German-speaking canton. German is mainly spoken in 3 countries: Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Austrian German is only a slight dialect/accent of Germany German. But Swiss German is a lot different! To be completely honest, there’s actually no “Swiss German”, since every canton has its own dialect. There’s Zurich German, Basel German, Bern German, etc. They are indeed very different — by the end of my stay I was able to understand Zurich German (which I was told is “practically Hochdeutsch”, i.e. Germany German), but I still had no idea what Bern people were saying!
Note that all the Swiss Germans above are only written languages — books, newspapers, and TV are all in Hochdeutsch. TV is interesting to watch — while they try their best to speak in Hochdeutsch, the accent is still there! And kids in schools are expected to speak Hochdeutsch with their teachers.
It must be an interesting experience to learn German as a foreigners when you’re in Zurich. From what I’ve heard, they teach you Hochdeutsch in German courses, because that’s what they’re “supposed” to speak. But that’s not what they speak! I guess they expect you to pick up the differences by yourself by talking to people? I will not know how that feels like, because I already spoke Hochdeutsch when I moved to Zurich. There are courses like “Swiss German for Germans”, but I didn’t take them.
Should you learn Swiss German? YES! The first 3–4 years I lived in Germany I only spoke basic German, and I would never feel completely comfortable in Germany. But after I finally learned German, Germany finally felt like home. I understood what people around me were speaking, the news, etc. I also learned German culture — you always learn the culture when you learn the language.
If you work in an international company, you’ll probably be surround by people speaking English, so there won’t be much incentive to learn English. Indeed many people at in my office didn’t speak German — at some point I was the only one in my team who spoke it fluently! But if you want to explore the life outside of your work — German is a must, and preferably Swiss German! Once a Swiss guy told me that they don’t like to speak Hochdeutsch to their friends, because it sounds too official — and some even prefer English over Hochdeutsch.
If you transferred with your company, you’ll probably be offered language courses, so don’t let it go to waste! Learning a language is much easier if you’re immersed in the environment. I’m pretty bad with languages, but it took me only 6 months to be pretty fluent in German since I decided to learn it —I remember studying something in classroom, just to go out and hear it immediately, and be like “I just learned this”.
My plan was to be in Switzerland for a year, so I didn’t invest enough time to learn Swiss German. I am still reading Swiss news, but they’re in Hochdeutch. I did, however, buy the following funny book to know the basics:
