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Comment by epolanski

11 hours ago

Lived in Switzerland and this is really not true.

What I've learned is that since Switzerland has 3 official languages (German, French and Italian) children and teens at school focus on learning one of the other two regions they are not from.

In particular this leads to French and Italian cantons to be moderately fluent in each other's language. Strikingly when I lived in Lausanne, more people knew Italian than English. English was really not on their radar (plus, add that francophones are kind of elitist when it comes to languages and don't really like to consume content that is not in french).

In German speaking Switzerland proficiency in English was still subpar from most of the rest of Europe when walking in a shop or going to a restaurant.

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epolanski

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smitty1110  3 hours ago

> What I've learned is that since Switzerland has 3 official languages

Everyone always forgets Romansh...

secstate  11 hours ago

Not to derail, but when I was in Switzerland, I found the German Swiss to be far more elitarian about NOT learning French, than the other way around. And French Swiss being a minority, they kinda got treated as other or less-than in the bulk of Switzerland. But all German Swiss are at least willing to try English, while the French Swiss tend to avoid English, so maybe that's where the vibe comes from?

  • oblio  11 hours ago

    For both you and OP, first of you, thank you for "elitarian", but even after reading the definition, I still think you both meant "elitist".

    And even though I probably tend to agree with both of you, it's kinda funny to blame French or German speakers about being elitist against English speakers, of which native speakers are notoriously monolingual :-)

    • epolanski  10 hours ago

      I don't blame anyone, I'm Italian and I'm fluent in French, English and Polish besides Italian.

      I'm just saying that in the French part of Switzerland English wasn't a given among any generation and it neither was common in the German/Italian parts too if you exclude the expats.

      And yes, francophone tend to be very elitist about consuming exclusively french content, regardless of them being from France, Switzerland or Belgium.

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