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Living overseas

Can anyone teach me some Valaisian Swiss-German please?

3 replies

Treeceratops · 21/07/2015 15:42

DH, DS and I are spending this autumn in Saas-Fee. I speak German but I'm struggling to find out about the local dialect. I'd like to come ready prepared with 'Good morning', 'please', 'thank you' etc. Can anyone help please?

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LIZS · 22/07/2015 08:32

you mean Gruezi, vielen dank/danke viel mal ? If in doubt bitte covers most for please, thank you, you're welcome, pardon etc. Most of the residents are well used to British tourists and if you attempt any German will respond in English.

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FinallyHere · 22/07/2015 08:43

I was at Uni Konstanz, so a little way away. Speak pretty fluent german, but found that i could not make head of the swiss dialect. I thought I could follow, but it turned out that on noticing my lack of comprehension, people would go back to HochDeutsch, albeit with a very heavy accent. That was what i could just about make out.

Any Swiss German speakers i have met in the business world, explain that their native language is mote of a throat complaint than an actual,language, and are comfortable using HochDeutsch.

www.scientific-publications.net/en/article/1000358/

Im sure you will pick up the intonation soon enough, once you get there. The challenge, as someone has already posted, will be to keep going in German when they reply in English. Good luck, keep at it and you will learn. Give up and you are providing free English lessons. Makes you very popular but makes it difficult to get really fluent in their language.

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Treeceratops · 24/07/2015 16:09

FinallyHere I spent my year abroad in Ravensburg- now you mention it I remember not being able to understand the crew on a boat trip I went on. HochDeutsch it will be then Smile
Thank you for the words LIZS I'll do my best to stick with German. DS might even come back bilingual! (competitive parenting joke- he'll be 25 months).

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