Sunday 8 December 2013

turmbau zu babel

This summer we were treated to a tour of Castle Tarasp, one of the last remaining fortifications of its type saved by an enterprising entrepreneur who introduced the German mouthwash Odol to the world and made dental hygiene something of a social necessity (like the vacuum-cleaner made hoovering a duty), and our guide was quite accommodating, telling the history of each chamber three times over for the sake of his audience—once in Schwyzerdรผtsch for the locals, then in Italian for a couple visiting and then in Hochdeutsch for our benefit.
The show was pretty impressive, but I understand that entertaining such a diglossa is becoming quite a rarity in the Confederation. Rather than learning on the four national languages, young students are tutored in English rather than standard forms of German, Italian, French—or the minority Rumantsch, a language descending from Roman occupiers displacing the original Celtic settlers' influence. Neglecting national and standardised forms, Swiss people are regressing further into regional and urban dialects, which while being very important cultural aspects to preserve, like the Bรคrndรผtsch of Bern or Baseldytsch, are essentially incomprehensible to others and defy being written down in any agreed-upon way, just like Italian and French versions, from outside. I wonder what it means to adopt a lingua franca that's not a national language and to revert further towards something that affirms pockets of patriotism. What do you think? Are national standards only an illusion and an artificial construct of the fretful or do they signal an important loss of identity?