Reposted from my LinkedIn Post:
“…will now default to English — not because it’s better, but because it’s equally bad for everyone.”
Glad to see Switzerland making steps to improve communication in a tiny country with huge language barriers. When I lived in the Swiss-German part of Switzerland in my early twenties, I had the quietest time of my life. The locals preferred speaking Swiss German when spoken to in standard German, so it was neither helpful for a German learner nor conducive to understanding. When they switched to English, it was, in most cases, worse than my German. After a decade of living in Germany and becoming fluent in German, I now know that trying to learn German to understand Swiss people was futile.
Native Germans have no idea what Swiss people say either!
“Tired of pretending they understand each other” from this article speaks so much to how I felt back then and the cultural undertone in Switzerland, which is otherwise a beautiful country with lovely people, when you understand them. Making English an official language will hopefully not only put different language speakers in Switzerland on the same playing field but also give them the incentive to speak it better and improve communication for everyone.
Cited original article link: https://ggba.swiss/en/western-switzerland-adopts-english-as-official-language/
