Swiss Review 3/2021

Swiss Review / June 2021 / No.3 6 Focus EVA HIRSCHI Renata Coray grew up speaking Romansh and Swiss Ger- man in the canton of Basel-Landschaft. She studied in French and German in Fribourg, currently lives in Zurich, often spends time in Surselva, reads through English texts at work, and Italy is her favourite holiday destination. Not all Swiss are as adept at languages as Coray, who works as a project manager at the Institute of Multilingualism in Fri- bourg. However, the latest Federal Statistical Office (FSO) languages survey shows that Swiss multilingualism is very much on the rise. Over two thirds of the Swiss population – 68 per cent to be precise – regularly use more than one lan- guage. The figure was 64 per cent in 2014. And it’s not re- stricted to two languages: 38.4 per cent regularly use two, 21.3 per cent three, 6.4per cent four, and 1.7 per cent asmany as five or more languages. It is worth noting that standard German and Swiss German were not classed as two differ- ent languages in the survey. “Increased mobility, enhanced language teaching, a more cosmopolitan population, and improved communication throughnewmedia and the internet andother channels are helping to fuel multilingualism,” says the sociolinguist Coray. Another reason for the increase is that the question- ing in the study has changed, she adds. Until 1990, respond- ents were asked to indicate just one mother tongue (even if theywere bilingual). Since then, respondents have been able to include any dialects, and, since 2010, up to three main languages. Over- and under-representation Despite its rise, multilingualism remains politically sensi- tive in Switzerland – exemplified by the long struggle to preserve Romansh and the controversy surrounding ear- ly-age language teaching of English at the expense of French inmany schools. The promotion of the national languages – particularly theminority languages Italian and Romansh – is, however, enshrined in the Federal Constitution. Coray: “Quite a lot has been done at political and legislative level, but the reality on the ground is sometimes different.” Ac- cording to research in 2020 by the Centre for Democracy Studies in Aarau, German speakers are significantly over-represented and speakers of the minority languages under-represented in around two thirds of all departments within the Federal Administration, for example. There is a similar problem in Grisons, says Coray. Grisons is the only canton with three official languages (German, Romansh and Italian), yet German continues to dominate at the administrative level. Does it even make sense to promote Romansh if only 0.5 per cent of Grison’s permanent resident population giveRomansh as theirmain language and only 0.9 per cent regularly use it – especially Grüezi, bonjour, allegra, benvenuto: A nation of polyglots With four national languages, dozens of dialects and a total of more than 250 spoken languages, Swiss multilingualism is alive and kicking – and on the rise. However, the advance of English as Switzerland’s “fifth national language” can no longer be ignored. as almost all Romansh speakers also speak German any- way? “It is true thatmy grandmother’s generationwas prob- ably the last to speak only Romansh, but promoting lan- guage diversity is nevertheless important for national unity and is part of who we are as a nation.” Switzerland’s vari- “Quite a lot has been done at political and legislative level to promote our national languages, but the reality on the ground is sometimes different.” Renata Coray