Grüezi mitenand! There's a bit of Swiss-German dialect for you, meaning basically "Hi, everybody!"In all our 21 months (!) now in Switzerland, I've never blogged on German. But learning Deutsch occupied a major portion of my time particularly in the months before landing a job; a fairly regular lesson schedule kept me sane by providing measurable progress during a difficult adjustment period when everything else seemed in the air.
A long time ago on a work-trip train ride to Milan, Steph randomly chatted with another U.S. ex-pat who recommended a long-distance tutoring program conducted via Skype. Inexpensive at $20/hour and much more flexible than classes, the service hooked me up with a Russian linguistics teacher who spoke six languages, including perfect German after working as a translator in Germany for several years, and former host of a German-food cooking TV show in Russia (?!), now living in North Carolina. We conducted one or two hour-long tutoring sessions per week for over a year, although we unfortunately canceled the lessons recently when her life became too hectic with one feisty toddler and another baby on the way.
For whatever reason, I pick up grammar quicker than most people (German has loads of grammar, rule after rule after rule) but struggle a bit with comprehension; vocabulary requires lots of memorization and speaking smoothly takes lots of practice. Although everything in Zürich and German-speaking Switzerland is written in standard or "high" German, Hochdeutsch, including newspapers, advertising, etc., the Swiss strongly prefer speaking their own dialect, Schwiizerdütsch, a rather unbecoming sing-songy guttural unwritten language unintelligible even to most native Germans (imagine the Muppets' Swedish chef choking on phlegm). Speaking Hochdeutsch is a touchy political issue in Switzerland; although Swiss learn Hochdeutsch in school (to read the newspaper, of course), most locals respond in English if addressed in German so daily "immersion" gains from hearing spoken German are largely unavailable.
The subject is on my mind only because after more than a year, I must be making progress--more or less successfully conducting a full 30-minute German conversation with my barberess last week. She's not shown in the picture above; that's from my still-jobless last summer when the family believed we couldn't afford the average 60 Franc ($55) men's haircut. As evidenced by her concentration, Steph gave the task her best shot but the result still earned a quizzical look from my old Chicago barber when we returned once last summer. Keeping my eyes peeled, I finally located one storefront with the rock-bottom haircut price of 28 Francs, the place I've frequented since. There's only one catch... the barberess doesn't speak English.
OK, I'm cheating now and going to break this post into two parts, although maybe it doesn't deserve it. I'll try to turn over a new leaf: shorter posts more often. You'll have to wait with bated breath to know what Abwasserreinigungsanlage means.
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