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The German of today is known because the so-called German part of Switzerland learns the language at school... the other part, the so-called Swiss-German (what people speak at home, etc.) is just a newer version of the languages some German tribes brought to the territory... one very ancient, the Helvetians gave the country's latin name of confoederatio helvetica.
The country was - at least partially - closly linked to Austria and Germany in the years before 1291 (medieval times). But not really as brother - rather as occupied agricultural zone. This led to the defence agreement, the foundation of Switzerland and the "we-do-not-like-that-much-our-bigger-brother-Germany" feeling the Swiss even showed during second world war... this means there was a kind of split between them... leading to two kinds of German as a language that are linked, but not close enough to be directly understandable to Germans without practice.
Wiki User
∙ 12y ago
Wiki User
∙ 11y agoGerman is one of the 4 official languages of Switzerland, the others are French, Italian and Romansh.
German became an official language because about 2/3 of the Swiss speak it as their first language.
Wiki User
∙ 10y agoAs long as there has been a Switzerland. The areas that originally formed the Swiss Confederation (the modern cantons of Uri, Schwyz, Obwalden and Nidwalden) around AD 1300 were populated by people who spoke a Germanic dialect. The non-German-speaking parts of Switzerland were added later. The first canton in which a language other than German is significant was Bern in 1353; the first canton in which a language other than German is dominant was Fribourg in 1481 (in both cases, the "language other than German" is French... the only canton in which Italian is dominant is Ticino, added in 1803, and Romansch, despite being one of Switzerland's four official languages, isn't dominant in any canton).
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