What are three official languages of Switzerland reflect influences on countries that border Switzerland?

Question

this an assignment for soc. st. cultural geography, i need answers before january 11, 2007...thats tomorrow!!!!

Answer 1

One of the key features of Switzerland is its cultural diversity. The ancestors of the people who live in this country today have their origins in different cultures. The most obvious result of this cultural variety is the fact, that - even if Switzerland is only a small country - there are as much as four different official languages: German (74%), French (20%), Italian (4%) and Romansh (1%) - the remaining 1% speaks other languages.

At the borders where two languages meet, the language does not change abruptly, it rather changes gradually. People living on the border usually grow up bilingual - this is especially true for the areas marked with strips on the map above. At school, the children have to learn a second language spoken in our country (however, there is currently a big dispute going on, whether our kids should learn English rather than German or French as a second language).

The border between the German and the French speaking part of our country is known as the "Röstigraben" (literally translated: "hashed potatoes ditch"). It stands not only for the separation of the languages, but also for the separation of the cultures and the ideologies. The lingual minorities sometimes feel out-ruled by the majority of the German speaking fellow citizen in political issues. While the French speaking Swiss tend to be more open minded, the German speaking Swiss tend to be more conservative. Again, this is a very general statement, a single individuum should not be judged simply by her or his language or origin.

The term "German speaking Swiss" is not really correct, they actually speak Swiss-German ("Schweizerdeutsch"). Swiss-German is very different form the German spoken in Germany or Austria. Even more surprisingly, there is no written Swiss-German at all. People in Austria, Germany and Switzerland share the same written German language, known as "high German" ("Hochdeutsch") - however, the term "written German" ("Deutsche Schriftsprache") is far more accurate. The written German is very different form the Swiss-German, it is almost a foreign language.
People in each canton have their own, very distinct dialect, which varies significantly. Again, the language changes gradually from north to south and from east to west. Even though the French and the Italian spoken in Switzerland are not absolutely the same as in the neighboring countries, they are not as different as the Swiss-German from the German-German or the Austrian-German.

Romansh is a very different and also a very old language. It is considered a "dead" language, because it does not change anymore. They do not introduce new words for new things, instead, they borrow terms from the German language. Even if there are only a few villages where they still speak this language, there are nonetheless five different dialects (known as idioms) around.
The words in the table below are provided in Romansh Sursilvan, the other idioms are known as Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Puter and Vallader. See Lia Rumantscha for much more information about Romansh.