Schon wieder da

I arrived back to Basel at 1am on Monday, to a toasty warm flat and the thought of returning to work and sorting out everything I needed to after my wallet was stolen in London. Both of these things have been tackled with and achieved. Not too much has been going on, really. Just plodding to and from lessons, standing in queues, eating and drinking copious amounts of tea.


One thing has changed, though. When I moved in to the flat, my flatmates told me that I would have until after Christmas before they stopped talking to me in High German, and would switch to Swiss. Now, those of you in the know will know how scary and incomprehensible Swiss German can seem. Ordinary German words are replaced by (often cute) little utterances that were unknown to me when I arrived in September. So, the German "Guten Tag" (Good day) becomes Grüezi, the German "Kacheln" (tiles) becomes Plättli, and the German "etwas" (something) becomes öppis, all of which I like to throw into conversation now and again.

Add to this a spattering of French words not used in High German, but used in Swiss High German (which is kind of a standard across the various Swiss dialects), and I was soon happily talking about Poulet, Billets and Velos rather than the more Germanic "Hähnchen", "Fahrkarte" and "Fahrräder".

The final casualty in this whole process was the scharfes e, or "funny b", the beloved ß of those North of the border. Apparently it's not been used since the 1930s here. I don't really miss it too much now, either.

Soon, my assimilation into the ways of Swiss will be on the road to completion, and I'll be able to whip out sentences like a pro. That is until I leave the confines of Basel and the Baselbiet, because out there in the remaining swathes of the Deutschschweiz, the dialect is a whole other kettle of fish.