Re: Swiss-German vs. Swiss dialect of German

Staving Harald Stoiber:
>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!
Mind you, I've read interesting things about Austrian German as well. Tom
Stoppard's play "On the Razzle" is adapted by a work by a Vienniese
playwright, whose dialect was so strong that his plays are said to be
untranslatable, even into German!

Pete Bleackley