Has anyone ever been to...?

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â™« sf_ca áƒ¦

German, French, and Italian, depending on which border you are close to. Geneva and Lausanne are mostly French-speaking, and the more north you go, it becomes more German-speaking. So it depends on where you are.

Goddess of Grammar

I live in Switzerland. I personally speak English (I'm from Canada) but about 65% of the rest of them speak Swiss-German, 20% French, 10% Italian and maybe 5% other, including Rhaeto-Romansch, standard German, English, Albanian, Turkish, Thai etc.

The basic stuff isn't hard. In the German part: Greutzi! Ich hatte gern....bitte. Merci vielmals. Entschuldigung, sprechen Sie English?

In the French part: Bonjour! J'aimerais bien...s'il vous plait. Merci beaucoup. Excusez-moi, parlez-vous un peu d'anglais?

In the Italian part: Buon giorno! Voglio per piacere... Grazie mille. Scusi, parlate inglese?

No one ONLY speaks Romansch, so don't worry about that. What I said was "Hello. I would like...[point if you have to] please. Thank you very much. Excuse me, do you speak English?"

For French I added "a bit of English", they'll be helpful if they have to but don't actually enjoy speaking English. Swiss-Germans are quite happy to practice their English, plus they're modest and will say "a bit" anyway, even if they studied English in Australia for years. In the Italian part, they speak less English but they're the friendliest. Notice I said "merci vielmals" for thank you in GERMAN. Not a typo, it's more common here than the standard German "Danke schoen" and it'll make Swiss people happy, like you're going the extra mile. (As opposed to just "Merci"--then they might just think you only bothered to learn to say it in French.)

Sanmigsean

German, French, Retro-roman

Nice place, nice people. Expensive for people who don't live there.

Oww

Speak different languages, depends on what part of country they're closed to. like if that part of their country next to Germany, they will speak German and if that part of country next to Italy,they will speak Italian, so depends on what part of Switzerland you will be visiting and then you can start to learn that language.^^

superklutsonaskateboard

in switzerland the mainly speak german or french and no i dont think it would be very hard.

M.O.A.B

I live in asia,I have been to switzerland twice. I love the place.I speak english to any/every swiss. They speak english too.
I would like to go back again soon.

huguenot85

They speak German in Eastern and most parts of Northern Switzerland, French in Western Switzerland, Italian in the South and Romansch in some parts. Most people speak English, as well. It's not hard to learn the basics, but be ware, because the German is not high German, it is a Swiss dialect that it sometimes very different from high German. Most travel books on Switzerland include a glossary with helpful words in Swiss German, French, and Italian.

joie de vivre

I have never actually been to Switzerland. But I do know they speak German and some (like 20%) speak French in the western part. Other than that there is a little bit of Italian and Rumantsch. But everyone speaks German. If you can learn that you will be okay. I don't know if English is your native tongue but if it is German should not be very difficult to learn. German is the closest cousin to English of any language in the world. I hope this helps. :)

BGEBgd

they speak french, german italien and retro-roman

borscht

I used to live in Switzerland. The official languages are German, French, Italian and Romansh, with German being the most used languages. If you speak German, most will understand you, however most German speaking Swiss speak a family of dialects called Swiss German. It's far enough removed from the High German that Germans even just across the boarder have difficulty understanding them. Most Swiss German speaking people can also speak "Schrift deutsch" (written German), which is closer to high German.
Because I was trying to learn German when I was there, I chose not to speak English very much. However when some people heard my accent, they would switch to English.

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