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All of the dialects of German are written down.
Glaswegian is written down, but it's written down phonetically, as there's no 'official' spelling. Same with Geordie. Never ask a Geordie how to spell 'dut' (hat) as a fight will start shortly afterwards. Definitely don't ask what it means, as a riot will swiftly ensue.
It's certainly true that there aren't official spellings for most and perhaps all dialects. I don't know what the state of Swiss legislation is on that count, i.e. whether Schwyzerdütsch has any kind of protected status.
It doesn't, at least not in the Académie Française sense. I started reading a Schwyzerdütsch dictionary (yeah, go me), and it had more possible spellings for each word than the number of words used in the definitions. It's madness out there, I tell you. Madness.
Brommers-
Glaswegian is written down, but it's written down phonetically, as there's no 'official' spelling. Same with Geordie. Never ask a Geordie how to spell 'dut' (hat) as a fight will start shortly afterwards. Definitely don't ask what it means, as a riot will swiftly ensue.
Sure, but what defines a 'written language'? The only ones that I'm aware of that were not written down following the invention of writing were various kinds of argot, for obvious reasons. I'd argue that Schwyzerdütsch is very much a written language. As I said above, there may be a confusion around the concept of "Schriftsprache", which Schwyzerdütsch isn't.
It's certainly true that there aren't official spellings for most and perhaps all dialects. I don't know what the state of Swiss legislation is on that count, i.e. whether Schwyzerdütsch has any kind of protected status.
It doesn't, at least not in the Académie Française sense. I started reading a Schwyzerdütsch dictionary (yeah, go me), and it had more possible spellings for each word than the number of words used in the definitions. It's madness out there, I tell you. Madness.
Ha, it would take a bit of work to bump it up to Académie Française status. :)
Multiple spellings were extremely common in all European languages centuries ago, of course, because it takes a great deal of development to reach standardisation.
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Never ask a Geordie how to spell 'dut' (hat) as a fight will start shortly afterwards.
Off topic, but having grown up in the north east, i have no idea what the word 'dut' is — could you enlighten me?
Oliver Schick
slippers
All of the dialects of German are written down. There are numerous "Mundart-Dichter" or "-Schriftsteller" who deliberately write in these idioms, to raise awareness, to popularise their use, and to try to raise their status in comparison to idioms like "Hochdeutsch" or the "Amtssprache". See the BAP example above, or this:
http://www.comedix.de/medien/lit/mundart_sammelband_schwyzerduetsch.php
There are also plenty of dictionaries like this one:
https://www.schweizerdeutsch-lernen.ch/blog/schweizerdeutsch-woerterbuch/
It's certainly true that there aren't official spellings for most and perhaps all dialects. I don't know what the state of Swiss legislation is on that count, i.e. whether Schwyzerdütsch has any kind of protected status.