Peter Clark wrote:
> Christian Thalmann tried to throw a monkey wrench into the
well-oiled
> machinery of the beloved poll by including Swiss German as a
"half-langauge"
> since he wasn't sure whether to count it as a dialect of German (which he
> also speaks) or not. This required careful thought on my part, but I came
to
> the conclusion that Swiss German cannot be considered a separate language
> because, while it has an army, it does not have a navy.
It does. And it's also the language most guys speak on SF (the Swiss-German
national broadcast). Some politicians use it also, mostly when they're
dealing with affairs concerning the German speaking part of Switzerland- I
happened to see some talk-shows (Arena, IIRC) where Schwytzerdüütsch
politicians tried to speak as clear as possible in order to make Italian and
French-speaking colleagues understand what they were saying. And believe me,
an Appenzeller speaking High German sounds really funny... I love the
grotesque sound of Schwytzerdüütsch;-) [IX "li@p ts "gnYs fn "ti:s6 "SprO:X]
:-)
> Ergo, it's a dialect, not a language.
From a strictly linguistical perpective, it's on the boundary. I personally
can understand some of it after 5 years of German in High School- notice I
don't speak German so good.
Luca