Duden has a ready ear for the Swiss
So, slight differences are allowed: you grillieren (barbecue) with friends instead of the German grillen, and you cycle to work on your Swiss Velo (bicycle – many Helvetisms originate from the French) rather than on a Germanic Fahrrad. Swiss German terms that sound less like their Standard German counterparts are usually put in quotation marks and, where necessary, translated into German: “Güggeli” (Backhähnchen / roast chicken – note the onomatopoeia), “Anke” (Butter / butter) and “Brösmeli” (Krümel / breadcrumbs) are three that come to mind. Longer passages in Swiss German are translated into Standard German as you would any foreign language. Take the phrase uttered by an old farmer in his broad Bernese dialect: “Es isch haut geng e Chrampf gsi” (It was just enough of a cramp.). Non-Swiss German speakers would have no idea that he’s explaining how hard the work was.
The Eliza Doolittle dimension
But what about the way people express themselves orally? My Fair Lady, the musical, provides an answer. There, the philologist Professor Higgins takes up the challenge of Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl with her “kerbstone English” (a.k.a. Cockney). He wagers he can teach the young woman how to express herself accurately (and to change her accent to the “Queen’s English”) and thus gain access to the upper echelons of society. Likewise, it helps to speak good Standard German in front of an audience – albeit with a Swiss accent. There are things you can get away with in Swiss German that really jar if uttered in Standard German, e.g. “Wir wissen, dass es jene Schüler einfacher haben, wo älter sind” (instead of “... die älter sind” – the phrase means “We know older students have it easier”). Likewise, Swiss German dialect sounds strange to Standard German ears, as in the phrase: “Wir schauen, dass die jungen Athleten nicht den Ablöscher bekommen” (We’re ensuring that young athletes don’t give up). Language is all about understanding and it has to be said that using Standard German also helps to prevent misunderstandings. “Springen” means to run in Swiss German but to jump in Standard German, and if a Swiss person says “Es fällt uns nicht ring, auf sämtliche Anliegen einzugehen” (We’re not finding it easy responding to all concerns) a “German German” would have to check the meaning – the word “ring” might mean “easy/simple” in Swiss German, but to a Standard German speaker, a ring is a ring.
Personal expression as a calling card
Dialects per se are part of all our cultural heritage and deserve to be preserved. The Schweizerisches Idiotikon, a dictionary of the Swiss German language, is an ongoing, major project of lexicography of Swiss German dialects. But grammatical blunders and dialectal mistakes are just as bad in a printed text written in Standard German as they are spoken. Verona Pooth (née Feldbusch) became something of a celebrity in Germany this millennium, not least for coining a now-cult grammatical infelicity in a TV commercial (which, naturally, loses something when it has to be explained). In saying “Da werden Sie geholfen” (when she should have said “Da wird Ihnen geholfen”), she ignores the fact that the verb to help in German takes the dative. But it still raises a laugh – particularly if you are a native-speaking German...
