I’ve been living in Zurich for 6 months now. I have to say that I am constantly impressed and awed by the average number of languages people can speak here, in this small (but quadrilingual) country in the centre of Europe. Coming from bilingual Canada, I am embarrassed to say that the few years of French I took in junior high is nothing but a distant memory, and that despite speaking Mandarin at home with my parents, I still can’t tell a story from beginning to end without resorting desperately to a few English words that I just can’t think of in Chinese. (Ironically, these are not difficult words, but rather things like “parking lot” and “cheese”…).
In Zurich, I have the amazing opportunity to learn a new language. I’ve always loved learning languages, not so much for the language itself (grammar rules make my brain explode), but rather the potential connection I could make with someone from an entirely different part of the world! But since almost everyone can speak English here, I don’t really “need” German to function in everyday life. Yet, I’ve realized more and more how much language can be a barrier to really integrating into a new culture. (Besides, no way am I passing up the chance to learn a language that has words like “handschuhschneeballwerfer” (lit. ‘hand shoe snow ball thrower’ – or – [a person who throws snowballs with gloves] or more commonly known as – [wimp].

Yet, in my quest to learn German, I have encountered several challenges:
1. People here speak a dialect called Swiss-German, which is unintelligible enough to (High) German that many Germans I’ve talked to, say that for the first 6 months, they have “no idea what [the Swiss] are saying”. Only after months of highly focused concentration can my German friends begin to understand (though not speak) Swiss-German. Unfortunately, what this means for me is that the meagre set of German words I actually know will be pronounced slightly (to significantly) differently to what I learned in class, thereby lacking the immersive repetition and redundancy that helps so much when one learns a new language.
2. The academic community functions primarily in English. To this, I hold a significant (and completely unfair) advantage. While speaking English at the university is fantastic, in the sense that I can communicate here as I did in Canada without skipping a beat, a drawback is that I often go through a whole day without hearing or speaking a single German word. (With the exception of “mit Gemüse oder ohne Gemüse?” (with or without vegetables?) at the cafeteria).
3. This point is fairly obvious, though not something I originally anticipated when moving here. Its all about making good impressions. Basically, if I speak in German to a person I just met, I’m going to look and sound a bit ridiculous. Rather than making eye contact, I will probably look up a lot while I try to visualize grammatical rules and sentence structures in my head. I will often accompany this with hesitant hand gestures and many apologetic faces, inevitably making my whole body language look less confident. Sure, the message gets across, but I kinda feel like I’m playing charades – instead of saying things the way I usually would say them, I grab at awkward combinations of words using my limited vocabulary. In comparison, if I speak in English to someone I just met, communication flows naturally, and my new potential friend cannot help but notice my radiant personality (and dare I say, irresistible charm).

4. Last but not least, despite all good intentions, I am lazy. After a high mental load all day, I do not find listening to German after work particularly relaxing. By the end of the workday, I just want to do or watch something that does not require a high cognitive effort. With only so much energy and hours in the day, I assume this is one of many reasons why expats who work in English-speaking offices can go for years without mastering the local language.
To address Dilemmas 1 and 2, I have taken German classes and convinced my beloved colleagues to teach me useful phrases like:
- “Rache ist Blutwurst!” (lit. ‘revenge is bloodsausage!’). Note: One must always say this with while waving a fist in the air
- “Gekochte Haferflocken!” (lit. cooked oatmeal). (Try saying this out loud – it is indeed delightful).
- “Ich werde nie wieder meine Kollegen schlagen!” (‘I will never again hit my colleagues’)
- “Ich werde nie wieder falsche Versprechungen machen!” (‘I will never again make false promises’)
A few steps after my rabbit fence adventure, we saw this. Strangely enough, such grammatically sound phrases haven’t come in all that handy in day-to-day conversations. (Though it has been fun to add an exclamation mark at the end of every sentence…!).
As for Dilemmas 3 and 4, lets just say that I’m working on it. It is my hope that, by the end of my PhD, I will be completely fluent in German. Or, at least enough to avoid getting electrocuted at the damn rabbit fence again. Thanks a lot Winnie the Pooh.
Hey there! I understand this is somewhat off-topic however I
had to ask. Does building a well-established
website like yours take a lot of work? I am completely new to writing a blog but I do write in my diary every day.
I’d like to start a blog so I can share my experience and views online. Please let me know if you have any kind of suggestions or tips for new aspiring bloggers. Thankyou!
Hi Patrick! Sorry for the delay, and thanks for your message! Can you send me your email to helen.he@ifi.uzh.ch? Then I can (try to) give you a proper answer (which will probably still be completely useless…). :p Helen
Way cool! Some extremely valid points! I appreciate you writing
this write-up and the rest of the site is also very good.
I’m not Swiss, but in my German a wimp was simply a “Flasche” (bottle)