What Language Does Switzerland Speak ?
A country famous for chocolates, cheese and watches; Switzerland is located in Western Europe. The country’s capital is Bern, and Zurich is known to be its largest city. The total population of Switzerland is approximately 7.5 million. A large chunk of the population does not belong to the country. |
The country has four official languages, namely German, French, Italian and Romansh. The specifications of these languages in relation to the geography are very clearly demarked. About 64 percent of the people residing in the northern and central regions of Switzerland use German as their first language. French is spoken by almost 19 percent of the total population in the western domain. In the south of Switzerland, Italian is the common language amongst 8 percent of the people. Although Romansh is the oldest language sharing similarities with Latin, it is only used by 1 percent of the Swiss population that too in the southeastern part.
However, there are regions where more than one language is prevalent as part of vocabulary. The Romansh areas; and cities of Biel and Fribourg are bilingual in terms of German being used in addition to Romansh and French respectively. An interesting feature is that the German spoken in Switzerland is rather different from that used in Germany. The Swiss people have deciphered an innovative version of German referred to as ‘Swiss-German’, which apparently cannot be comprehended by Germans themselves! However, the language is written in a similar pattern as in Germany.
Statistics reveal the prevalence of fairly high percentage of languages other than these four in Switzerland that include Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish and English. This is mainly due to the high rate of immigration in the country from diverse land with varied backgrounds. However, since these languages are probably grasped by only 2 percent of the actual population, the usage of one of the four official languages becomes mandatory in order to carry out day to day life.
English is understood fairly well in this land. In fact, certain multinational companies with high English speaking cliental have declared English as their corporate language. Many inhabitants also use English words as part of their vocabulary.
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