Do you speak Swiss?

Since Switzerland joined the Schengen area in 2005, abolishing border controls with neighboring countries, the small central European country has seen a steadily increasing flow of immigrants from Germany.

In 2005, 18,224 Germans immigrated to Switzerland. That number nearly doubled in three years with more than 35,000 in 2008. In 2010, by the end of August (the latest date for which statistics were available) 20,715 people had already moved to Switzerland from Germany, on track to set a new record for German immigration.

The Schengen shuffle

The ever-increasing number of newcomers has not gone unnoticed by the Swiss. David Contardo, a 32-year-old typesetter from Zurich said it's hard not to notice the amount of new German residents in Switzerland.

"I've also noticed [the increased immigration] in the lake-side towns near the German border," Contardo told Deutsche Welle. "There, many Germans have settled. This does bother me a bit, though I do understand that Switzerland has been for some time a multicultural country."

His fear is that the uniqueness of Swiss culture is being slowly diluted by this influx of foreigners.

"It won't be astonishing if at sometime in the future the 'true Swiss culture' can no longer be found," he said.

"I sometimes feel like a foreigner in my own country," said Heidi Kost, a 61-year-old teacher from the Zurich area.

"This isn't a repudiation of foreigner workers in our country, but rather a question of the quantity," she added. "The basic problem is not with Germans, but rather more with the sheer number of foreigners who live in our country."

For some Swiss, though, the relaxed borders brought about by the Schengen Agreement are a good thing.

Susanne Vogel, who works as a laboratory technician near Zürich, said she likes how easy it is for people to work across the Swiss-German border. She said she still feels there should be moderation, however.

"Internationalization is good, but the native culture shouldn't be driven out," she said.

The language factor

Language is a fundamental part of native culture and many Swiss are not happy with the perception that the Swiss-German language is considered inferior to standard German. While standard German is the official state language, there is currently no conventionalized written form of Swiss-German.

David Contardo is particularly dismayed that in Swiss schools all subjects including math must be conducted in standard German beginning at age seven. "With this, the Swiss language is being lost,” he said.

School teacher Heidi Kost is similarly irked by the situation. "We must learn standard German in school simply to read books because there is hardly any literature written in Swiss-German," she said.

"Most Swiss people are ready, even if sometimes unwillingly, to speak standard German. However, because we have an accent when we speak this language, we don't always feel so comfortable when we have to speak 'correct' German," Kost added.

Consensus conundrum

Switzerland is already a land of many tongues, with four official languages: German, French and Italian and Romansh. The largest portion of the Swiss population - 63.7 percent - speak German as their first language, but even within this population there are dialects that differ from canton to canton.

Even though many Swiss are not happy having to speak standard German with the German newcomers, they're still not ready to institutionalize their own language.

"Our dialects are in some cases so different, that I don't see how we could find a common basis for the construction of a standard Swiss language," Kost said. "I think the Swiss like this variety and that it is simply easier to have a 'foreign' official language than to create our own. The Swiss are so proud of their cantons, each with its own associated dialect, that only a few would want to change things."

Contardo added that it would be too difficult to find a common standard: "The people from Bern wouldn't like it if something was written on the basis of the Zurich dialect."

And for some, such as Susanne Vogel, the roles that the two languages have ended up fulfilling are now too distinct to change.

"For me it's good to have standard German as the official language," she said. "Swiss-German is the language of emotions. Standard German is the language of formality. For business communication, I find it fit and proper to write in standard German."

Author: Gary Levinson

Editor: Stuart Tiffen / Kate Bowen