Schwyzertüütch and English accents

I remember sitting in the Swiss Consulate in Johannesburg ten years ago. Accompanied by my wife, who had a smattering of high German and had lived and worked in Switzerland for two years after finishing high school, I was applying for an entry permit, one of the steps along the way to our exciting adventure. The wife didn't need one, being a dual citizen, but I was going to be subjected to the full scrutiny of the teutonic-minded burocrats serving their sentences in the fleshpots of Africa. I use the word fleshpot intentionally, out of deference to the surprising and remarkable attitude of certain people I have spoken to over here, who seem to assume that Africa = Free And Uninhibited Sex With Innocent Happy Natives. Of course, coming from there, I am only too aware of how extremely malignant sex in Africa can turn out to be (28'000'000 HIV cases in SA in...when was that conference in Geneva....2004 or so?!), so I must admit, I'm not very encouraging to those who wax lyrical about their upcoming conquests during their trip to the dark continent.

Anyway, to get back to the point, there I was, languishing in the waiting area after being politely and efficiently dealt with by a well-mannered young Swiss lady with a perfect command of the English language. My fears about going off into the blue yonder without a clue as to how I was going to communicate had been little allayed by my wife's assurances that one could get around with English in Switzerland, and that it wasn't all that hard to pick up the basics in German. The smiling clerk with her perfect English had certainly helped put me a bit more at ease with the course I was about to set my future on. Of course, while I was waiting for my documents (they printed them up and gave you the official stamp all on the same day!! Mind-blowing efficiency for lil ole South African me!) I happened to pick up a magazine to browse through. My fear of the unknown began nudging and poking at the fringes of my consciousness when I started flipping through the pages and saw that the articles were all written in German. This was nothing, however, to the fright I experienced when a perfectly normal looking lady of about fifty walked into the foyer and began addressing the nice young clerk in the most horrible gobbledy-gook I had ever heard. To make matters worse, the clerk simply smiled and began uttering similar sounding noises. Even though I'm normally very sensitive concerning things like staring, pointing, etc, I sat there, mouth hanging open and eyes bulging. Like good Swiss, they politely ignored me. To my untrained ears, their conversation sounded like the hawking, spitting and coughing of two drunken sailors from Glasgow, with a few nasal tones thrown in between grunts for good measure. I turned to my wife in horror, and discovered to my chagrin that she was having a good chuckle at this, my first introduction to "Schwyzertüütch", pronounced "Shweetserdooch" and meaning Swiss-German, or Swiss dialect. Looking back on the scene in later years, I realised that it was "Züritüütch", or Zürich dialect, that they were speaking, hence the extreme gutteral intonation, but at the time it was just plain scary!

The reason I thought of this is that today it occurred to me how normal all this now sounds. Pulled up at a red light at a busy intersection in rush hour Zürich, one can hear the somehow comforting sounds of the locals as their conversations drift through the open window, then suddenly the unutterably alien sound of English being tortured by the rolling, endless R's and drawn out A's of an American shoots through the familiar hum of good old homey Züritüütch and pearces one's eardrums like a lone ray of light in the retina at 05h00. No sooner have you identified the individual in the bright clothing and flashy sunglasses (even though it's quite overcast at the moment), than the awfully pompous sound of a pasty-faced little chap in a dark suit holding forth in the Queens English to his equally bland colleague drifts in from the opposite window as the pedestrians begin to cross. Only the instant burst of love and gratitude that you feel towards these people the moment you hear your beloved mother-tongue being used fluently and correctly in the midst of this foreign country stops you from wincing at the accents!

In fact, I remember hearing a strikingly dull and not at all intelligent sounding accent in the Glatt centre one day. As usual, the English jumps out at one, and you can't help but hear it due to the contrast with all the different accents and dialects going on around you in Swiss. After listening in for a sentence or two I turned to see if my wife was in the vicinity. The English was good, but the accent was terrible, and I wanted her opinion on where they came from. She, knowing my penchant for pronunciation, was one ahead of me. Seeing the questioning look of horror on my face, she silently mouthed the words, "South African". I closed my mouth and went about my business, suitably chastened. We all sound strange to one another, I've realised. It just took me a long time of not hearing other South Africans to realise that I actually don't speak God's own English...