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Comment by lajosbacs | Hacker News Reader

Adding to my previous comment, in Switzerland, people speak very specific Swiss German, yet the videos are autodubbed to 'hoch' (standard) German.

It's a bit of an exaggeration, but it is as if a person is Lisbon would get their videos dubbed to Spanish.

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But every speaker of swiss german is expected to also speak and write standard german. "swiss standard german over swiss german dialect" is enforced in school, sometimes even during breaks.

There's no formalized system for writing swiss german. (We even call swiss german "Mundart", literally translated "mouth type".) Only with sms and social media written swiss german has become a thing amongst younger people.

I don't think youtube not serving content badly translated to swiss german is a problem, quite frankly I'm happy swiss german is "ours".

I just wish google realized that "German (Switzerland)" means no need to auto-correct anything to 'ß'

I know, but on the other hand you have many Swiss who, when spoken to in perfect Hochdeutsch, prefer to reply in English. No way you're gonna win over these people with autotranslate to what they consider a 'foreign' language.

Switching to a even more foreign language is a bit weird - in my experience the concern about English is much greater than about German. I'd expect people would just only speak swiss German (deciding between talking swiss German or standard German with a standard German speaker is a bit of a difficult question as well). Can I ask about your background? Switching to English is usually a tourist/clearly not german-speaking thing.

Disclosure: I do consider standard German a semi-foreign language.

As an Austrian, I consider the way Germans (with the exception of Bavarians) speak our language highly grating and painful to listen to.

I'd rather hear them speak in English than having them butcher the melodies of my language.

I wouldn't fault youtube on that specific point. Swiss german isn't really recognized as a distinct language, and it is pretty fragmented by regions/cantons.

What is more complicated is more the fact that we have 4 official languages :)

Their failure to differentiate Swiss German isn't the problem as of itself. Rather, it is a clear example of why they should stop being opinionated about the language that their users want.

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