Hello
together!
The
Swiss are fortunate enough to have a linguistic situation which very
much encourages the learning of multiple languages. English included.
Indeed, the Swiss tend to speak a very high standard of English.
However, English is often viewed as a cool, trendy language – this
leads to the peppering of Swiss German with random English words
which tend to be used, shall we say, creatively.
Image
source: Deccon Bewes
For
example in the special board above. 'Tages'
is German for 'of
the day',
however the unfortunate juxtapositioning of the English 'hit'
leads one to look onwards, perhaps to a restaurant that isn't
offering excrement of the day...
The
English used is often strange, and can often be completely made up.
Consider the following: the Swiss often go wellnessing
or enjoy wellness
weekends
in order to aufpowern
('power
up?')
after a stressful week of work. 'Wellness' actually refers to spa
therapy – inventive in itself, before reflecting on the point that
I'm not even sure if 'wellness' is even an English word?
Flumserberg:
a nice but unrelated photograph.
When
you do happen to find an English word in use in Swiss German, being
able to speak English is no guarantee of understanding its meaning in
Switzerland! We all know what a car is right? Err, a car is a car.
Well, not in Switzerland. A Swiss Car
is actually a coach or bus. So if you see a car-lane on a Swiss road,
you should probably avoid driving down it...
Mega
easy, gäll? Schönes Weekend!
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