Zürich German


Zürich German is the High Alemannic dialect spoken in the Canton of Zürich, Switzerland.
Its area covers most of the canton, with the exception of the parts north of the Thur and the Rhine, which belong to the areal of the northeastern Swiss dialects.
Zürich German was traditionally divided into six sub-dialects, now increasingly homogenised due to larger commuting distances:
Like all Swiss German dialects, it is essentially a spoken language, whereas the written language is standard German. Likewise, there is no official orthography of the Zürich dialect. When it is written, it rarely follows the guidelines published by Eugen Dieth in his book Schwyzertütschi Dialäktschrift. Furthermore, Dieth's spelling uses a lot of diacritical marks not found on a normal keyboard. Young people often use Swiss German for personal messages, such as when texting with their mobile phones. As they do not have a standard way of writing they tend to blend Standard German spelling with Swiss German phrasing.
The Zurich dialect is generally perceived as fast spoken, less melodic than, for example, the Bernese. In the northern parts of the canton, the "r" is pronounced as a uvular trill, whereas in the city around the lake and in the southern parts, it is pronounced as an alveolar trill.
Characteristic of the city dialect is that it most easily adopts external influences; in particular, the second generation Italians have had a crucial influence, as has the English language through the media. The wave of Turkish and ex-Yugoslavian immigration of the 1990s is leaving its imprint on the dialect of the city in particular.

Example

The following text is an example of Zürich German taken from a news article:
Here is the following text translated into standard German, or Hochdeutsch:
And finally, the text translated into English: