Lenk, Switzerland...

[Frances]

Re: Lenk, Switzerland...

Cool, Dusty!

Bier is a very good word to start with, you can go a long way just saying bier

But if you don't have the umlauts (") just put an e after the vowel - ue for ? - thats perfectly acceptable alternate spelling.

So go on then, impress me...

[CanuckJim]

Re: Lenk, Switzerland...

Frances,

Nein, nein, nein. Es ist zwei (drei, vier, fu[e]nf) biere. Nicht wahr? Or is it "ein vogel und zwei voegel"?

Jim

[dusty]

Re: Lenk, Switzerland...

Frances,

Nein, nein, nein. Es ist zwei (drei, vier, fu[e]nf) biere. Nicht wahr? Or is it "ein vogel und zwei voegel"?

Jim

Smart aleck! That's a tough one to follow Jim.

I am embarassed to say that I learned "gruezi" (hello),"haerdoepfel" (potatoes), and "chuchichaeschtli" (kitchen cabnet). Not very impressive at all now. My bubble is burst!

After reading Jim's post I suppose I now know "nien"(no) also. Not much use with "beir" though!

dusty

[Frances]

Re: Lenk, Switzerland...

Chuchichaeschtili is good start, a real classic. Its what any Swiss person comes up with when asked to say something in Swiss German .

I remember one time at a youth hostel in Scotland when I spent an entire evening trying to teach some American how to say it - and then when he finally got it right, boy was he disapointed to hear what it means!

[sarah h]

Re: Lenk, Switzerland...

Here's what my research came up with for that one ...

"To a speaker of Hochdeutsch, Swiss-German sounds archaic and singsong ? and this seems to delight the Swiss, who get their own back when they ask Germans to say the Swiss word for ?kitchen cupboard?: transliterated as chuchich?schtli, it sounds, when spoken correctly, like a cat coughing up a hairball. Even the Swiss affectionately dub their own language Mundart, or ?mouth skill?."

Now I wish I could actually hear it!

[dusty]

Re: Lenk, Switzerland...

Chuchichaeschtili is good start, a real classic. Its what any Swiss person comes up with when asked to say something in Swiss German .

Cool...I wondered why she was so proud of "kitchen cupboard".

dusty

[Frances]

Re: Lenk, Switzerland...

The next one to practice is "Z?ndholzsch?chteli" (Sarah, can you find that one, too?)... and once you can say that try this:

"Dr Pabscht het z'Spiez s'Schb?gg Bschtegg z'schpoot bschtellt"

Its the most fiedishly difficult toungue twister I have ever come accross, and means "the pope ordered the bacon cutlery in Spiez too late".

A while ago the papers were full of the story of this linguistics guy who spoke about 30 languages fluently and had a smattering of about 100 more. He was sitting in a large US airport listening to a group of business men at the next table, and trying to work out what language they were talking. Probably some obscure Arab dialect he decided, and also thought it was quite a good way of preventing industrial espoinage... well, you guessed it.

I do think Swiss German is quite a cool language to be able to speak.

[sarah h]

Re: Lenk, Switzerland...

Either 'matches', 'matchbook' or 'matchbox'?