French is used increasingly often in Switzerland
As for knowledge of foreign languages, the Swiss have nothing to be ashamed of: as the portal Swissinfo.ch notes, almost two-thirds of the country's citizens regularly speak at least one other language. With its four national languages, Switzerland is a unique phenomenon in Europe, and yet alongside them, other languages not belonging to the national ones are increasingly heard in everyday life.
According to new data from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (Bundesamt für Statistik – BfS), the majority of the country's permanent population speaks German and/or one of the Swiss dialects of German. Among languages not classified as national, speakers of English or Portuguese are increasingly encountered in everyday life in Switzerland. The statistical office used the concept of "first main language," i.e., the language in which a person thinks and which they know best.
An interesting trend: since the 1980s, the number of those who name German and/or one of its dialects (Zurich, Basel, Valais, etc.) as their "first main" language has been steadily declining. The situation is similar with Italian: the share of those who prefer to express love in it has been quietly but steadily declining since 2000, but now this indicator has started to grow again. French, on the other hand, has managed to strengthen its position over the past two decades, even though it remains a minority language.
All these changes observed since 2000 are largely related to changes in the methodology of counting and statistical accounting. For example, until recently, someone who grew up in German-speaking Switzerland but spoke Portuguese at home had to choose just one "first main" language during surveys. However, since 2010, respondents can indicate several languages as such (e.g., in this case, Portuguese and German). But it is precisely this that has now led to a sharp increase in the share of "non-national languages" in the overall language structure of Switzerland.
According to Renata Coray from the Institute of Multilingualism (Institut für Mehrsprachigkeit) at the University of Fribourg, the languages used in Switzerland and their extent are greatly influenced by economic cycles and, accordingly, the nature of labor immigration to Switzerland. Currently, about 25% of the country's population are persons without a Swiss passport.
It is clear that the increasing role of English in Switzerland is a logical consequence of the country's position in the global labor market. In 2010, 4.6% of the population spoke Shakespeare's language as their "first main" language. By 2017, this figure had already risen to 5.4%, which is, of course, due to labor migration from English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States.
However, the question of the reasons for the steady growth in the popularity and demand for French is interesting, while over the same period the number of those in the country who speak German and/or a dialect has been steadily declining? Most likely, to find the answer to this question, we need to look at the structure of immigration to the country with different approaches of different regions to solving the problem of linguistic integration of foreigners.
As Renata Coray says, in the cantons of French-speaking Switzerland, migrants are more inclined to learn the language and adapt to the new linguistic environment. For example, if Spanish-, Portuguese-, or Italian-speaking migrants move to the French-speaking west of the country, on average they learn French quite quickly. This happens because, firstly, all these four languages belong to the same language group. And secondly, because the French spoken in everyday life in Switzerland does not differ from the standard language. Whereas in the German cantons, learning Standard German does not guarantee that you will be able to communicate with people who speak rural dialects in everyday life and understand them: after all, these dialects sometimes differ greatly from the language of Schiller and Goethe.
Thus, in the German-speaking part, migrants face a double language barrier that is absent in the French-speaking part of the country. Therefore, migrants from Kosovo, Croatia, or Turkey are less inclined to learn German, because the standard language, which takes a lot of time and, most importantly, money to learn, does not allow them to immediately communicate in everyday life.
A migrant might want to learn a dialect, but the question arises – which one? There is no unified grammar for dialects, and Zurich German differs greatly from Bernese or Valais German. The last option remains – to speak English, but if in Zurich this is a perfectly viable option, in Bern it is not always.
The data on the language situation in the country were obtained through a special analytical survey. Such surveys have been regularly conducted in Switzerland since 2010 in written form, and only part of the population participates in such a survey, not all residents of the country as before, so the risk of errors and statistical inaccuracies increases.
This is especially evident in the example of the Romansh language: according to statistics in 2017, 44,000 people spoke it as their "first main" language in Switzerland, i.e., 0.5% of the total population. "However, very many use it as a second spoken language, so the BfS now assumes that in one form or another, 60,000 people in the country know Romansh. That is, the share of those who use it may be much higher than the official statistics suggest," concludes Renata Coray.
Alexandra Kohler.
Translation by Igor Petrov.