I had such a good time at the German and Scandinavian table yesterday! By the way, since last week I've officially become a member of the former and thus am in possession of a club card - which is (and I can't deny I noticed that with some regret) decorated with a German flag and three German eagles, while for Austrian or Swiss symbols there was no space. - Anyway. It was exactly the latter element of our triumvirate which was the reason for my good time:

There was this girl who spoke standard German with quite a strong Canadian accent. When talking about where she learned German she answered it was in a non-German environment and pointed to the Swiss flag.
"You learned German in the French part of Switzerland?"
"No - in the German part, just that that's not German at all."
"Where did you learn German?"
"Well actually I'm Austrian."
A friendly "Oh a neighbour!" followed. She was very happy to hear that I was confident to understand her if she talked Schwyzerdütsch. And there they were, the "gsi" (gewesen) the "Lüt" (Leute) the "vaschto" (verstehe). Amazing! I'm of course no expert on Swiss German but to me it sounded simply perfect, I couldn't hear any accent at all. (And she stayed there only for a year!) It was so funny. She talked her German and I spoke mine - and I think nobody around had any clue what we were talking about.

Later that evening we ended up in the Hudson's pub (as usual). I bumped into a couple of exchange students who were with some Canadians I didn't know. One girl started to talk to me and when hearing I'm Austrian she started to talk in very shaky German: "Ik spreken bisschen Deutsch weil mein Eltern sind Switzerland". I first thought: Ok another one of these second generation immigrants who have lost their parent's language. But then - after just a few sentences the accent increasingly had turned from Canadian to Swiss. When I smiled and told her she apologised but I encouraged her that I understand her well. Then it started: Suddenly it was a waterfall of Swiss German. (And it was very cute that she kept asking over and over again whether I understood what she had just said.)

That was so funny! Of course everybody says Swiss German is a language on its own, yet, I was simply amazed that the language ability differs that much! As for Swiss and Austrian native speakers I'd generally assume that it may take us some effort to change our pronunciation to "Hochdeutsch" (at least for me) but still it's our mother tongue and grammatically we're more or less perfect. In contrast for these two girls it's obviously really two different foreign languages and one they know perfect, the other they don't...