Re: Swiss-German vs. Swiss dialect of German

On Friday 14 February 2003 9:42 am, Harald Stoiber wrote:
> Hello people, :-))
>
> I am a German native speaker living in Austria, thus, right next to
> Switzerland. Having a friend who is living in Switzerland, there is one
> thing that really puzzled me:  Once I found an Old High German text on the
> internet and I did not even understand 20% of it. I sent the text over to a
> friend in Switzerland (Kanton Solothurn) and she gave me a 75% translation
> of the text on the fly - without the slightest university knowledge of the
> ancient german language!
>
> Speaking to swiss people can sometimes be travelling back to the roots of
> German - which is enormously interesting!
>
> Cheers,
> Harald
It's probably the same in English.  Your average English person couldn't read
an old English text, but a Frisian probably could, to some degree...