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  • •

    Reasons for my interest, in order of precedence.

    • I spend three weeks a year in German speaking countries for skiing, climbing, hiking and football. It'd be nice to have basic conversational German nailed.
    • I have lots of German speaking business contacts. If I discover that I enjoy learning the basics I'd like to spend the next few years developing my skills so I'd maybe be able to take advantage of various opportunities I may have with German speaking organisations.
    • It is likely I will be living in a German speaking part of Switzerland for a period in a few years time.

    I like the suggestion of doing a GCSE course to start with.

  • •

    Swiss German is as foreign a language to Germans as English.

    I tried to improve my German when i lived in Zurich, but if I spoke in German to a Swiss they'd reply in English.

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    I used to go to Switzerland regularly. In the francophone regions when I tried to speak French people would either ignore me or reply in English. In the Germanic regions if I tried speaking in German they'd assume I was a lazy French Swiss who had never bothered to learn German and would reply to me in French.

  • •

    Swiss German is as foreign a language to Germans as English.

    Schwyzrdütsch occurs in several depths of accent. Some of it is quite close to standard German, but that from other regions is indeed completely unintelligible to a German German speaker. Then again, I can't understand a word of really heavy Platt (influenced by Friesisch), Schwäbisch, Bayrisch, or Österreichisch, either.

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