One of the things I was curious about on my recent trip to Switzerland was how much French I would hear, and if it would sound different from the French I’d learned in Paris. Switzerland has four official languages: French, German, Italian, and Romansh. About two-thirds of Swiss people speak German, just under a quarter speak French, and 8% speak Italian. Romansh, a close cousin of Italian, is spoken by less than 0.5% of the Swiss population.
The western part of Switzerland is called “La Suisse Romande” (also referred to as Romandy or Romandie), meaning it has its roots in Latin like the other Romance language-speaking European countries. Out of 26 Swiss departments (known as cantons), only four are fully Francophone: Vaud, Jura, Geneva, and Neuchâtel. An additional three are Franco-German: Bern, Valais, and Fribourg. In the rest of the cantons, German is the primary spoken language (with the exception of one solitary Italian-speaking canton on the country’s southern border). We were in the canton of Fribourg, not to be confused with the Swiss city of the same name. To make things a little more confusing, we stayed in the town of Gruyères (with an “s”), which is in the district of Gruyère (with no “s”), one of the seven districts of Fribourg.
About 2 million people live in Romandy, which is situated around Lac Léman (more commonly known outside of Switzerland as Lake Geneva). The country’s hybrid French-German culture dates all the way back to the Early Middle Ages, when what we now know as Switzerland was divided between the Kingdom of Burgundy (French) and Alemannia (German). In fact, the Burgundian domain spread across Switzerland, France, and Italy, and included cities like Geneva and Lyon. Today, that linguistic heritage feels more like a bridge than a barrier between the French and German-speaking parts of the country. Swiss children attend classes in the local language of their region, but will also learn French or German (depending on where they are), as well as English.
As someone who has lived in Germany and studied the language, I’m more than familiar with the stigma around Schweizerdeutsch, or Swiss German. I wondered if Swiss French would have a similar reputation. But nearly every Swiss person we encountered spoke French with us, a slow, clear, cheerful French that was easy to understand. There was none of the rapid-fire slang of Parisian French, or the Italian-inflected drawl of Provence. I also noticed that the accent I considered a stereotypical “Swiss” accent came from the German speakers when they talked to us in English, while the French speakers simply sounded, well, French. In terms of Swiss French vocabulary, the only major difference I noticed lay in numbers—the Swiss have simplified the complicated French system of counting, using the terms septante (70), huitante (80), and nonante (90). I’m sure every French person born in 1999 is fuming with envy.
Recipes on Repeat…
I recently came across a Brussels sprout pasta recipe from the mustard brand Maille that is so good I ate it for a week without getting sick of it. (The trials of cooking for one…) It only uses a few ingredients, including their “Old Style” whole grain mustard, and it would be easy to customize by adding a bit of shredded chicken or some butter beans for a little extra protein. Would recommend it for your next low key dinner party with friends or family.
