Switzerland Today

Greetings from Bern,

While the news yesterday was grim and depressing, today it’s merely irritating. At least it is for one Swiss journalist who gets wound up by the amount of English he hears in Zurich – from when he's walking his dog or ordering a pint. What really gets to him is when expats, who can’t speak any German despite having lived here for years, then have the nerve to complain that the Swiss are unfriendly. What do you reckon?

Keystone

In the News:  Did you know that girls’ names in Switzerland must end in ‘a’?

• OK, it’s possible I just made that up, but looking at the top ten Swiss baby namesExternal link – the annual list was published by the Federal Statistical Office today – every single girl’s name, from Mia at the top to Laura in tenth place, does indeed end in an ‘a’. The trend for boys’ names is more biblical, with Noah at the top, Aaron at the bottom and Gabriel in the middle.
• Many, many years ago – when Thomas was more popular than it is today – I memorised pi to about ten decimal places. It was pointless then and it’s pointless now – and the University of Applied Sciences in Graubünden agrees with me. They – or rather one of their supercomputers – has spent more than three months calculating piExternal link to more than 62 trillion places. “Doing this has no practical use,” the university admittedExternal link to Swiss public radio, RTS, but they said the experience they gained could be applied in other areas such as RNA analysis, simulations of fluid dynamics and textual analysis.
• I haven’t bought anything with coins for months, thanks to a Covid-induced preference for cashless payments. I must say I quite like it – but not everyone does. A committee worried that e-payments will lead to financial surveillance or systemic malfunctions in Switzerland has launched an initiative to prevent any future phasing-out of cash.

swissinfo.ch

Many expats can’t speak German even after living in Switzerland for years, and then they complain how unfriendly the country is.

That’s not me saying that – it’s the view of journalist Rico BandleExternal link, writing a column in the Tages-Anzeiger (although I get where he’s coming from). Nowadays in parts of Zurich, he says, one hears almost as much English as German, thanks to multinationals like Google and federal technology institute ETH Zurich attracting well-educated people from all over the world.

“Actually, this is good news,” Bandle says. “Yet it’s irritating when you’re spoken to in English while walking the dog, when people order a beer in a pub in English, when customers ask the [supermarket] cashier for rubbish bags in English. Nothing against English – nothing against expats either, most of whom are exceptionally friendly – but why do many of them not even attempt to speak a few words in the local language when they move to another country?”

Surveys have repeatedly shown that foreign workers love Switzerland’s quality of life but hate how hard it is to settle in and make friends, with the locals getting marked down for being cold and unwelcoming.

“That may, alas, be true,” Bandle says. “But it takes two. People who after several years are still not prepared to speak a word in the national language shouldn’t be surprised at being perceived as ‘foreign bodies’.”

What do you make of this? Does Bandle have a point? I think he probably does, although I’m willing to cut some slack for people on short-term contracts – and, as Bandle himself admits, Swiss-German is a significant hurdle.

A separate but connected issue is when Swiss from different linguistic parts of Switzerland communicate in English. What’s your view on English as a lingua franca – is it a positive or a problem? Have your say in one of our liveliest debates!