So in Scotland they speak Scottish-English? Irish-english in Ireland?
What's your proficiency in these languages ?
Swiss German is based around Alemannic dialects rendering it often and frequently unintelligible to traditional German speakers.
Both things are wrong. It's not a dialect in the sense that it is not the same language with special intonation, some new words and new idiomatic sentences. It has its own (much simpler) conjugation and declension scheme. Much closer in feel to a creole.
Its written form is also not german. Good luck reading some of the züri by mike comic strips as a german reader.
If by "eventually you get it" you mean "after putting enough effort into learning it", then yes. But that's the same for every language.
If you mean "you need a few hours to get used to it and then you understand almost everything", then... well... not at all.
Germans don't understand Swiss-German, and Swiss-Germans don't consider German as their mother tongue. Whereas the French being spoken on the French part of Switzerland is slightly different from the French from France, but people still consider that French is their mother tongue.
Not sure if that answers your question, or if you were just complaining about the fact that I made a difference between German and Swiss-German :-).
Depends where in Scotland and how much they've had to drink.
On a serious note, words like ken, bairn, breekies, stramash are not that well understood by English people. But it's unlikely a Scot would use them when talking to an Englishman.
That's different with Swiss-German. If a Swiss-German person talks to you in German, then they are not talking in their language.
Bairn is northern English too.
It is very unlike a French hearing Italian even though it is the same Latin root and words look the same on paper, grammatically it is very different.
Apparently not enough to learn that nobody in Switzerland would ever call that "the Swiss"? There is not even "one Swiss-German".
> grammatically it is very different.
In your 4h in the Gotthard tunnel, did you get to see how Swiss-German is written differently than German? Also the grammar is fairly different.
But yeah those are dialects, nobody said they weren't. I just said "they don't speak German, but Swiss-German" (more as a "fun fact" than trying to be pedantic), and they would definitely correct you if you said it is the same. Whereas a Suisse Romand (the French speaking Swiss) will tell you that they speak French, just like a French-Canadian from Quebec.
Wikipedia has the following to say:
The dialects that comprise Swiss German must not be confused with Swiss Standard German, the variety of Standard German used in Switzerland. Swiss Standard German is fully understandable to all speakers of Standard German, while many people in Germany – especially in the north – do not understand Swiss German.
Weekend in French: Le weekend
Those are all perfectly valid French words, but the meaning is slightly different ("la fin de semaine" in France may include Thursday/Friday, whereas in Quebec it's really for Saturday and Sunday (instead of "weekend")).
boyfriend in French: petit ami
it goes both ways you know. in practice I find quebecois much more infected by anglicism.