My bike race of 2024 was a departure from years past: I tried a new event, the Engadin Radmarathon. The hosting town is Zernez, which is a 45-minute drive from Saint Moritz, in south-east Switzerland. Zernez’s canton – the rough equivalent of a Canadian province or UK county – is known as Graubünden in German, and Grisons, in French.

Zernez in Winter

But I don’t want to write about biking here. I want to write about language.

Languages and Dialects

Anyone who has visited Switzerland knows that many (most?) of the people are linguistic virtuosos.

There are four official languages in Switzerland. The percentage of Swiss who speak them as a first language are as follows: German (62.3%), French (22.8%), Italian (8.0%) and Romansh (0.5%).

In the case of Romansh, you have to give kudos to a country that officially supports a language spoken by such a small percentage of its people. [All four official languages appear on Swiss banknotes, which the Wangs crew will remember was a source of great mirth. “Dieci Franchi”, however, is Italian, not Romansh.]

Continue reading →