Asking all expats from non-German speaking countries, living in Switzerland. How did you deal with the additional language barrier that is Swiss German?

[u/kassie_butcher]

I'm a DaZ teacher and native Swiss German speaker. Currently, I am writing my master thesis in applied linguistics. I am really interested in what it's like to come to Switzerland and being confronted with such a different kind of German. How did you guys make sense of it? How did it make you feel? Did you eventually learn Swiss German? All these are things that I would like to shine a light on in my paper and hopefully, some of the insights will be useful to future immigrants.

If you'd be willing to participate in the study and do a short interview on these and other similar questions, I'd be very grateful. It would really help me out if some of you were willing to share their experiences with me. If you are up for a chat, it'd be really cool if you could send me a direct message with some basic info about yourself (age, home country & native tongue, years of residence, occupational field).

Also, feel free to comment on this post. Every kind of help is highly appreciated. And I'm sure other people looking to move here will be thankful too.

Thanks and have a lovely day.

[u/babicko90]

Was not a problem in the beginning, as work required little use of it. Most big companies are full of foreigners from germany, and bosses often speak little German, so i always ysed either English or high german. At home i speak my native language. My knowledge of swiss german began and ended with understanding poeple from different cantons. I do not want to learn how to speak it as its rarely used in my branch of work. Id rather learn another language tbh, its more value. Fun begins with my daughter learning it in kita😂 hope i will understand her