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Helvetisms (Neo-Latin Helvetia "Switzerland" and -ism ) are features distinctive of Swiss Standard German, that distinguish it from Standard German. The most frequent Helvetisms are in vocabulary and pronunciation, but there are also some distinctive features in syntax and orthography.
The French and Italian spoken in Switzerland have similar terms, which are also known as Helvetisms. Current French dictionaries, such as the Petit Larousse, include several hundred helvetisms. [1]
The definitive work for German orthography, the Duden, explicitly declares a number of helvetisms as correct Standard German – albeit with the [schweiz.] annotation, denoting that the usage of the word is limited to Switzerland. However, not all words may be considered part of the "Swiss standard language"/"Swiss standard German" category, because frequency of usage must be evaluated as well; if this does not apply, or if a word's use is known to span only one or more specific dialectal regions, the word must be categorized "dialectal" (German: mundartlich, often abbreviated mdal.)
In orthographical terms, the most significant difference to Standard German outside Switzerland is the absence of ß (eszett). (After having been officially abandoned in the Canton of Zürich in 1935, this character gradually fell into disuse, until it was eventually dropped by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1974.)
In everyday language, Helvetisms may be used both consciously and unconsciously by a Swiss German native speaker. Classic examples of Helvetism usage throughout entire literary works are found in a large part of Swiss literature, notably Jeremias Gotthelf's novels located in the Emmental; a contemporary example would be Tim Krohn in his Quatemberkinder. Another group, the most notable of whom is Peter Bichsel, deliberately use Helvetisms to arouse a sort of emotional attachment to the readers' home country: Bichsel is notorious for using dialectal words like Beiz (instead of Kneipe [English: "pub"]), or Kasten (instead of Schrank [English: "cupboard/cabinet/closet"]) in his "San Salvador" short story. Lastly, there is yet another group of authors whose readers are known to be located all over the German-speaking territory (Germany, Austria, Switzerland as well as some smaller minorities in other European countries) and therefore traditionally refrain from using any Helvetisms in their literary works.
In addition, words which are used outside Switzerland, but which originate from Swiss German may be called "Helvetisms".
Analogously to "Helvetisms", there are also Austricisms and Germanisms (also Teutonicisms).
In the area's cuisine, local culture and politics, there are numerous peculiarities that are not well known outside Switzerland and which do not have an equivalent standard German expression.
Because of their characteristic pronunciation, speakers of Swiss Standard German will be instantly recognized by other German speakers in most cases.
In general, the pronunciation of Swiss Standard German is influenced by the respective Swiss German dialect of each speaker. The degree of that influence may vary according to their education.
Swiss German exhibits a strong trend toward stressing all words on the initial syllable:
A special feature of Swiss Standard German, is a somewhat "singing" cadence. That means that each word's stressed syllable isn't only marked through the higher voice volume, but also through a distinguishable modification of the voice's sound. In general, the pitch of the stressed syllable sinks.[ citation needed ]
In orthography, the most visible difference from Standard German usage outside Switzerland is the absence of ß (officially abolished in the Canton of Zürich in 1935; the sign fell gradually out of use and was dropped by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) in 1974).
French and Italian loanwords are written in their original forms in spite of the spelling reform. Majonäse stays Mayonnaise, and Spagetti stays Spaghetti. The NZZ uses the spelling placieren (to place, from French placer) rather than platzieren, which is more common elsewhere.
Geographical names, such as streets, are mostly written together: Baslerstrasse, Genfersee, Zugerberg etc. Compound terms relating to nationality are often written as one word, such as Schweizergrenze ("Swiss border") and Schweizervolk (Swiss people) instead of Schweizer Grenze and Schweizer Volk. The names of municipalities, towns, stations, and streets are often not written with a starting capital umlaut, but instead with Ae, Oe and Ue, such as the Zürich suburb Oerlikon, or the hamlet Aetzikofen, or the Bernese municipality Uebeschi. [2] However, field names, such as Äbenegg, Ötikon (near Stäfa), or Überthal, and any other word, such as Ärzte (English: physicians), usually start with capital umlauts. [3] Finally, there are specialities like e.g.
Some of the above-mentioned characteristics are due to the general introduction of the typewriter in economics and administration. Because a Swiss typewriter must be able to write not only German texts but also French and Italian texts, the limited number of keys was not enough for all these languages' special characters to be included. So, the eszett and the uppercase umlauts (Ä, Ö and Ü), as well as other upper-case accented vowels (e.g. À and É, used in French and Italian), were omitted.
Swiss German differs from Standard German in, for example, the gender of nouns (das E-Mail, das Tram and das SMS instead of die) or in the preposition that verbs require (jemanden anfragen instead of bei jemandem anfragen).
In general, more often than in Germany or Austria, the Swiss use expressly feminine nouns (Bundesrätin Ruth Metzler , Frieda U. wurde zur Primarschullehrerin gewählt) rather than the generic masculine (Bundesrat, Primarschullehrer etc.) to refer to occupations and positions held by women. The Binnen-I (as in ProfessorInnen) is standard in Switzerland but may be marked elsewhere as "politically correct".
Relative pronouns : The relative pronoun welche(r), considered clumsy and antiquated in Standard German, is used without hesitation: in Damit wurde in der Schweiz ein Kompetenzzentrum für Klimafragen geschaffen, welches verstärkt die Bedürfnisse der Bevölkerung in den Mittelpunkt ihrer Forschung stellt. (from Jahresbericht 2001, Annual report of the ETH Zürich).
Rabatt is used in the dative case; in Standard German in the accusative case. Example: 20% Rabatt auf allen Artikeln.
The syntax has many constructions with a shortened main clause and a following subordinate clause, which is only marked by the initial position of a verb, e.g.
In his book Zündels Abgang , author Markus Werner uses Tram ("tram") – which takes the female article die in Germany's Standard German – with the typically Swiss neuter article das.
The word Putsch is one example which is widely used in political contexts, even in notable Standard German newspapers. [4] [5] [6] The word Müsli , however, is a special case: in Swiss Standard German (and only there), Müsli is the diminutive of Mus ("mouse") and stands for "little mouse". To describe the food, the Swiss use the spelling Müesli (reflecting the pronunciation [ˈmyəsli] of the dialects).
Swiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy bordering Switzerland. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are grouped together with Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg, which are closely associated to Switzerland's.
Alsatian is the group of Alemannic German dialects spoken in most of Alsace, a formerly disputed region in eastern France that has passed between French and German control five times since 1681.
Standard High German (SHG), less precisely Standard German or High German, is the umbrella term for the standardized varieties of the German language, which are used in formal contexts and for communication between different dialect areas. German is a pluricentric Dachsprache with currently three codified specific national varieties: German Standard German, Austrian Standard German and Swiss Standard German.
Œ is a Latin alphabet grapheme, a ligature of o and e. In medieval and early modern Latin, it was used in borrowings from Greek that originally contained the diphthong οι, and in a few non-Greek words. These usages continue in English and French. In French, the words that were borrowed from Latin and contained the Latin diphthong written as œ now generally have é or è; but œ is still used in some non-learned French words, representing open-mid front rounded vowels, such as œil ("eye") and sœur ("sister").
Ë, ë (e-diaeresis) is a letter in the Albanian, Kashubian, Emilian, Romagnol, Ladin, and Lenape alphabets. As a variant of the letter e, it also appears in Acehnese, Afrikaans, Belarusian, Breton, Dutch, English, Filipino, French, Luxembourgish, Piedmontese, Russian, the Abruzzese dialect of the Neapolitan language, and the Ascolano dialect. The letter is also used in Seneca, Taiwanese Hokkien, Turoyo, and Uyghur when written in Latin script.
Swabian is one of the dialect groups of Upper German, sometimes one of the dialect groups of Alemannic German, that belong to the High German dialect continuum. It is mainly spoken in Swabia, which is located in central and southeastern Baden-Württemberg and the southwest of Bavaria. Furthermore, Swabian German dialects are spoken by Caucasus Germans in Transcaucasia. The dialects of the Danube Swabian population of Hungary, the former Yugoslavia and Romania are only nominally Swabian and can be traced back not only to Swabian but also to Franconian, Bavarian and Hessian dialects, with locally varying degrees of influence of the initial dialects.
Middle Low German is a developmental stage of Low German. It developed from the Old Saxon language in the Middle Ages and has been documented in writing since about 1225/34 (Sachsenspiegel). During the Hanseatic period, Middle Low German was the leading written language in the north of Central Europe and served as a lingua franca in the northern half of Europe. It was used parallel to medieval Latin also for purposes of diplomacy and for deeds.
The phonology of Standard German is the standard pronunciation or accent of the German language. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof as well as the geographical variants and the influence of German dialects.
German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic. However, it shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling once the spelling rules are known, but the opposite is not generally the case.
Colognian or Kölsch is a small set of very closely related dialects, or variants, of the Ripuarian group of dialects of the Central German group. These dialects are spoken in the area covered by the Archdiocese and former Electorate of Cologne reaching from Neuss in the north to just south of Bonn, west to Düren and east to Olpe in northwest Germany.
Berlin German, or Berlin dialect, is the regiolect spoken in the city of Berlin as well as its surrounding metropolitan area. It originates from a Brandenburgisch dialect. However, several phrases in Berlin German are typical of and unique to the city, indicating the manifold origins of immigrants, such as the Huguenots from France.
Zurich German is the High Alemannic dialect spoken in the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. Its area covers most of the canton, with the exception of the parts north of the Thur and the Rhine, which belong to the areal of the northeastern Swiss dialects.
Swiss Standard German, or Swiss High German, referred to by the Swiss as Schriftdeutsch, or German: Hochdeutsch, is the written form of one of four official languages in Switzerland, besides French, Italian, and Romansh. It is a variety of Standard German, used in the German-speaking part of Switzerland and in Liechtenstein. It is mainly written, and rather less often spoken.
Erzgebirgisch is a (East) Central German dialect, spoken mainly in the central Ore Mountains in Saxony. It has received relatively little academic attention. Due to the high mobility of the population and the resulting contact with Upper Saxon, the high emigration rate and its low mutual intelligibility with other dialects, the number of speakers is decreasing.
Jean de Pauly was the translator of French editions of the portions of the Talmud and the first complete translation of the Zohar. He sometimes signed his works "Pavly." Born in Albania, he earned his doctorat ès lettres in Palermo, then lived at Basel, Lyon, where he appears to have been a teacher at the School of the Sacred Heart, then Rome, Orleans, Turin, before returning to die in poverty in Lyon. In his last years he was occupied with the translation of the Zohar, proposed to Pauly by France's biggest paper manufacturer, the Catholic Émile Lafuma-Giraud, and published 1906-11. His Zohar translation was criticised by Gershom Scholem for falsifying the book’s content.
Umlaut is a name for the two dots diacritical mark as used to indicate in writing the result of the historical sound shift due to which former back vowels are now pronounced as front vowels.
The terms Rhinelandic, Rhenish, and Rhinelandic regiolect refer to the vernacular lect spoken in the so-called Rhineland of West Germany. This linguistic region is approximately formed of the West of North Rhine-Westphalia, the North of Rhineland-Palatinate and several smaller adjacent areas, including some areas in neighbouring countries.
Chemnitz dialect is a distinct German dialect of the city of Chemnitz and an urban variety of Vorerzgebirgisch, a variant of Upper Saxon German.
Kerkrade dialect is a Ripuarian dialect spoken in Kerkrade and its surroundings, including Herzogenrath in Germany. It is spoken in all social classes, but the variety spoken by younger people in Kerkrade is somewhat closer to Standard Dutch.
Wir haben abgetrieben! was the headline on the cover of the West German magazine Stern on 6 June 1971. 374 women, some, but not all, of whom had a high public profile, publicly stated that they had had pregnancies terminated, which at that time was illegal.
In der Schweiz sind auf historischen Karten grosse Umlaute mit Ae, Oe und Ue bereits vor der Einführung der Schreibmaschine um ca. 1880 zu finden. Der Umstand, dass später auf der Schweizer Schreibmaschinentastatur keine Ä, Ö, Ü existierten, dürfte diese Schreibtradition gefördert haben. Heute wo die Schreibung Ä, Ö und Ü ohne weiteres möglich wäre, wurden wegen der einheitlichen Schreibweise in Verzeichnissen die grossen Umlaute von Gemeinde-, Ortschafts- und Stationsnamen konsequent als Ae, Oe und Ue geschrieben. ... Umlaute von A, O, U am Anfang von Flurnamen schreibt man gewöhnlich als Ä, Ö, Ü. Falls entsprechende Namen als Gemeinde oder Ortschaft existieren oder falls es sich um öffentliche Bauwerke handelt, werden die Umlaute häufig als Ae, Oe, Ue geschrieben[ permanent dead link ]
Die Schreibweise Ae, Oe, Ue am Anfang von Strassennamen ist weit verbreitet, ebenso bei Orts- und Stationsnamen. Die Weisung über die Erhebung und Schreibweise der Lokalnamen sieht für Lokalnamen Ä, Ö, Ü vor. Die Meinungen, welche Schreibweise für Strassennamen gewählt werden soll, sind recht unterschiedlich. Das Eidg. Gebäude- und Wohnungsregister macht zu einer allfälligen Umstellung keine Vorschläge, empfiehlt jedoch, sich innerhalb einer Gemeinde für die eine oder andere Variante zu entscheiden. Bei einer Schreibweise bestehender Namen mit Ae, Oe, Ue wird abgeraten, Ä, Ö und Ü für neue Strassennamen zu verwenden.