3

Today remarkably across German-speaking countries Switzerland keeps a very high level of usage of dialects other than Standard High German (SHG). Although non SHG-dialects are also commonplace in Austria, it's not on the same level of Switzerland, where Swiss-German appears in everyday life in every situation.

Up to mid 19th Century this was also the case across most of the German Sprachraum, although a standardization trend started to appear back then.

One of the reasons commonly cited for Switzerland keeping it's dialects is the "Defensive spirit" of Switzerland during WWII where the Swiss sought to show a different national identity from that of it's neighbors, with increased use of Swiss German, institution of Romansh as a national language, etc.

What I can't find are sources, or data or any sort of information regarding the use of Standard High German in Switzerland between the mid-19th Century and WWII. I'd assume the same pattern of standardization was happening in the country, which was reversed on WWII and kept like this ever since, but I have no sources to check that.

Are there information, sources, etc regarding the usage of Standard High German/Swiss German in everyday life in Switzerland before the rise of Nazism in Germany?

Improve this question
6
  • 3
    I think it is rather inverse - the Hochdeutsch was gradually imposed on Germans, but not on Swiss. Still, even today Germans from the areas around Basel speak a dialect similar to that one the Swiss side - at least, this is what some of them told me. Another thing to take into account is Alsatian, which was likewise displaced, but in favor of French.
    – Roger V.
    Commented Dec 6, 2023 at 8:42
  • 1
    Google Scholar shows many potentially relevant publications, the vast majority of them pay-walled. A freely accessible one mentions that turning towards use of dialects was part of "intellectual national defense" during WW2, but without going into details: "Als man in den dreißiger Jahren und in den ersten Jahren des Zweiten Weltkriegs in der Deutschschweiz im Zuge der sog. „geistigen Landesverteidigung” gegenüber Deutschland immer stärker die eigene Mundartlichkeit betonte, begegnete man dieser Bewegung in der französischen Schweiz mit Verständnis, ja sogar mit einem gewissen Wohlwollen, .."
    – njuffa
    Commented Dec 6, 2023 at 11:20
  • 1
    I'm not a fan of the use of "German-speaking" and "dialects" in the first edit of the question. Languages are made of dialects, and there's no reason whatsoever that the dialect spoken in Switzerland is any more (or less) legitimately "German" than the dialect spoken in Berlin. Editing the question accordingly.
    – T.E.D. ♦
    Commented Dec 6, 2023 at 18:05
  • It's not clear to me that there's an answerable question here. 1) Swiss Standard German is generally a written language, while the various overlapping Swiss German dialects are spoken and not written. This was presumably the case well before WWII and "developed as a result of long religious and political isolation from the centers of German linguistic standardization" (Fergeson 1958, p. 327).
    – Brian Z
    Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 1:27
  • 2) There are many different ways in which varieties of Swiss German are shifting over time (Christen 2009). So exactly what change are you trying to measure?
    – Brian Z
    Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 1:28

0

Reset to default

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.