I hadn't seen the thread before. I just wanted to say that Friesian is alive and well, and officially recognised as a minority language by the EU. Road signs are bi lingual in Friesland, event though every one there also speaks Dutch. Children learn Fries at school, and can take exams in Fries. There is also a Fries language TV and radio station, and newspapers with Fries editions. There are also Fries websites.

Limburgs, which is counted only as a dialect, is more of a foreign language to me than Fries.

Now that this fascinating thread has surfaced again, let me throw in a bit about Swiss-German, which is really a misnomer as I’ll explain.

Can you imagine growing up and, until age six or seven, speaking a language at home and on playgrounds etc. that you will never ever write in, except for a joke?

Sixty percent of Switzerland speaks one or the other of the many German-related “Swiss-German” dialects, and the entire region adopts the imported Hochdeutsch, High German, as the official written language. Verbally, the Swiss only express themselves in this imported High German whenever there is an official occasion, a public speech, and the official news bulletin on the radio is read in High-German (but not casual banter about sports etc.).

At age six or seven, in the very first year of school, High German is introduced, and intensely taught throughout the school years. All books and tests and many lectures in class are written and conducted in High German, hence sometimes referred to as Schueldütsch - school german.

These spoken-only dialects are collectively known as Swiss-German, Schwyzer Dütsch, but they vary so greatly among themselves that even a completely untrained ear can tell the difference, just from the sounds. More often than Schwyzer Dütsch, these dialects are named after the region - Bärndütsch, Züridütsch, etc.

“No” in Bern is “ney”, in many other parts (incl. Zürich) it is “näi”. Vocabulary can vary greatly from that of High German. Something as mundane as a match for example (as in match stick) is a “Streichholz” in High German, a “Zündhöuzli” in most of Swiss-German. Vocabulary can also vary from local dialect to local dialect.

Chances are that if you are from Meiringen in the Berner Oberland and your cot neighbor in the military service comes from Appenzell, you might have to resort to the imported High German at times just to understand each other.

So when you buy a newspaper or listen to a broadcast in Switzerland, realize that you are dealing with an imported common language of convenience, one that nobody speaks around the dinner table unless they are immigrants from Germany.

Over time the differences between dialects are eroding. Now that trains are so fast and commuting so prevalent, somebody who lives in Bern but works in Zürich will invariably bring home some Zürich sounds and words, and in maybe a hundred years or so, the distinctions might have become much less among the regions.

But right now, it still only takes a few words for a Swiss to be identified by others - as a Basler (very distinct!), a St. Galler (Sänggäller...), a Bärner - all minority speakers, much to the chagrin of German tourists who had no idea they wouldn’t be able to follow many a conversation since they expect the “German” in Swiss-German to be predominant, while it is actually the “Swiss” in Swiss-German that comes out on top.

This was one of my favorite threads. It no longer comes up in the search function.

cmt - I just tried the search on "minorized" and the search function did find this thread.

Maybe by posting on it, I popped it back into the searchable pile. It was not searchable when I tried.

Let's keep interesting threads like this alive and not have them closed in two years.

I agree! This was a very informative thread, and could continue to be so :)