The New York Times has convinced me it’s time for me to start reading novels in German. I expect this will be a bit of a challenge to my vocabulary…
13 commentsI think I’ve finally done it: I’ve gotten “grüezi” out of my system. After merely a week, I’m able to walk into a shop in Munich and not automatically blurt out the Swiss greeting. It’s actually not too hard here, since the standard greeting in Bavaria is “Gruβ Gott!”, which starts out a bit like “grüezi” anyway, making it possible to start out with one and then make a save half-way through and change it to the other without sounding like too much of a confused loser. OK, that last part may or may not be true – for all I know I sound like a confused loser all the time here. At least the Bavarians are nice about it. 
I’ve also managed to break the Swiss habit of saying “merci” instead of “danke”, although I admit to letting an “en guete” pass my lips once or twice this week. Now as long as I can remember to say “Fahrrad” instead of “Velo” and “Schokolade” instead of “Schoggi”, I should be all set.
8 commentsHave I mentioned how very, very excited I am to be moving to a place where they speak REAL GERMAN? Yeah yeah yeah, I know there’s an incomprehensible Bavarian dialect that lurks around, but when you’re not talking to drunk farmers, High German is the default language in Munich. High German, the German I know, love, and most importantly, UNDERSTAND. Yippee!
In honor of my impending return to German-land, I’d like to share a couple of my favorite German words and expressions. Perhaps you’ll even glimpse a bit of why I love this language so (although at the moment, I’m thinking my love for it is purely based on the fact that it’s not Swiss German). Apologies for any misspellings – it’s been years since I’ve actually written in German…
Arschgeweih – those ‘tribal’ lower-back tattoos (literally ‘ass antlers’)
Ohrwurm – a catchy song that gets stuck in your head (literally ‘ear worm’)
Vokuhila – mullet (short for ‘vorne kurz hinten lang’, or ‘short in the front long in the back’)
Kabelsalat – the snarl of cables under your computer desk, behind your entertainment center, or if you happen to be married to a computer engineer, all over your house (literally ‘cable salad’)
Schadenfreude – “Happiness at the misfortune of others? That IS German!” (I really wanted to link to the Avenue Q song here, but I couldn’t find a good video of it on the interwebs. You’ll have to settle for this bizarre animae version. Listen to the lyrics. Good stuff.)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me4wiUlOt3Q]
8 commentsIt still makes me giggle when German articles are applied to English words. On the train (on the way to das Musical), I had a discussion with some locals about whether it’s der Blog or das Blog (which reminds me – I also giggle when English words get German verb endings… ich blogge, du bloggst, sie bloggt, wir bloggen, usw…). Yes, I’m immature.
9 commentsOK, so I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting a lot of traffic from people searching the web for how to say things such as “Merry Christmas” in Swiss German. I thought I’d help you out by posting this little nugget of information, but then I realized that I didn’t know the answer. So I had my husband consult his bevy of Swiss colleagues to find out. Here is just part of the response:
It’s somehow difficult to write that down, but here is my attempt.
The following is to be pronounced as German words:“Schöni Wiehnachte”
Here the first ‘e’ in ‘Wiehnachte’ is not only a long ‘i’ but has to be pronounced as an ‘e’. The last ‘e’ is pronounced only short, sometimes it is that short that it can not be heard at all or it is totally left away.
Helpful colleague goes on to report that “Happy New Year” is “Es guets neus.” He adds that “Here the ‘ue’ in ‘guets’ is not pronounced as an ‘ü’ but as an ‘u’ followed by an ‘e’.” Got that?
My Züritüütsch (
The last one has a High German equivalent (Einen guten Rutsch!) and has always cracked me up. It literally translate to something like “have a good slide [into the new year]!”
So, Dear Readers, here’s wishing a good slide to you all, and of course a very schöni Wiehnachte.
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‘Schwiizerchrüzli’ is a good one, too. I’m starting to love Swiss German. 
Europe is full of Ridiculous English. In advertisements, in shop windows, and especially on clothing, it’s easy to find in almost any country on the continent. In Milan, my husband and I would laugh ourselves silly over the things we’d see on people’s chests or in stores, from a sparkly women’s shirt bearing the thought-provoking “pink pig always smiles” to the t-shirt that enthusiastically announced the wearer’s support for “Sporteam.” I am convinced I could make millions selling shirts that say “I don’t understand English” or “I have no idea what this shirt says.”
For some reason I expected to see less Ridiculous English in Zurich, probably because so many more people here seem to speak Actual English. Surely Ridiculous English would be less appealing here? But alas, it’s pretty popular. At least it makes shopping more interesting, like yesterday afternoon when we found these philosophical gems at Coop…
Nobody warned me substantially enough about Swiss German. To call it “Swiss German” in the first place is ridiculously misleading… it implies that the language is, in the end, a kind of German. Kind of like “American English”… to get from here to British English, all you have to do is say “boot” instead of “trunk”, “loo” instead of “restroom”, throw in a couple tag questions, and before you know it, Bob’s your uncle.
Not so with Swiss German and German. Although its roots are the same, Swiss German is a language all its own. There is a German woman in my Swiss German class, and she is just as bemused as the rest of us. Swiss German and German are about as similar as Spanish and Italian. If you speak one, you can make out some of the other, but they are definitely two distinct languages.
The similarities between Swiss German and German become clearer when one sees them written side-by-side; unfortunately, this rarely occurs in nature, as Swiss German is for the most part only a spoken language. Being able to recognize the written words is not going to help me at all except if I want to read the menu at the Crazy Cow, the only restaurant I’ve found that has the menu written entirely in Swiss German.
Luckily, this Swiss German class (which is about to draw to an end) has greatly increased my understanding of spoken Swiss German, as well. While I can’t really speak it with any degree of fluency, I can at least understand what my friendly neighborhood salespeople, postal workers, little kids and old ladies are saying to me when I encounter them out in the World Outside My Apartment. And usually, they understand me if I answer back in plain old German (everyone here learns German in school). So while I’m far from assimilation into my new homeland or becoming quadrilingual, at least I won’t have to say “Ich verstehe kein Schweizerdeutsch” 20 times a day anymore.
Just in case you too have a desire to communicate with the Tüütschschwiitzer (Swiss-German-speaking Swiss) in their native language, I offer you some of my favorite (if less useful) Swiss German words:
Gigelisuppe - a person who laughs a lot
Gfröörli - a person who always feels cold
Gwunderfitz - a curious person
Fäschtnudle - a woman who parties a lot
Chrüsimüsi - all mixed up
Gwafföör - hairdresser (basically the French word “coiffeur” pronounced with a heavy Swiss-German accent)
Wältschland - the French-speaking part of Switzerland
Rööschtigrabe - the imaginary line that separates French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland (literally ‘fried potato ditch’, named after Rösti, the fried potato dish that is eaten on the German side but not on the French side)
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