Café Franglais? French meets English in Bern
swissinfo.ch
You can see what they’ve done here: literally translate the German “Esszimmer”. Admittedly “dining room” sounds a bit more refined, but wouldn't the food by any other name taste as sweet?
swissinfo.ch
Another (intentionally) literal translation from German, this time on an advert for a language school.
swissinfo.ch
White Christmas? While every Swiss knows what they would find if they followed the arrow, not many would know what WC stands for. That said, how many native speakers do?
swissinfo.ch
A bilingual pun: when Germans talk about ‘ein Sonnyboy’, they have in mind a charming, happy-go-lucky young man – tanned or untanned.
Christoph Balsiger
Switzerland has three official languages: French, German and Italian. This makes life complicated – and expensive – for national associations or federations when deciding on a name. As a result, many opt for English, such as Swiss Air (now Swiss), Swisscom, swissinfo…
swissinfo.ch
It’s hard to tell if this is a joke intended to grab people’s attention (it worked!). This is a phonetic spelling of how German-speakers pronounce the “a” in words like “happy” and “Big Mac” (“heppy” and “Big Mec”).
swissinfo.ch
Another eatroom? In fact this is a T-less tea room – a common word in Switzerland.
swissinfo.ch
Many Swiss restaurants are named after bears or lions (Bären and Löwen), this entrepreneurial restaurateur diversified in another direction.
swissinfo.ch
Potential parking violation alert! A Car in Switzerland is not a car, it’s a coach.
swissinfo.ch
Even the correct “new arrival” might annoy pedants – why not just “new”?
swissinfo.ch
Forearmed is forewarned: if you’re getting a tattoo in a foreign language, definitely run it past a native speaker! This example is grammatically fine – not sure what it means though.
Christoph Balsiger
More than 50% off (the number of letters): the once standard “Ausverkauf” has almost completely disappeared.
swissinfo.ch
Swiss people can’t leave the house without being bombarded by English – with some words being “Englisher” than others.
This content was published on
Born in London, Thomas was a journalist at The Independent before moving to Bern in 2005. He speaks all three official Swiss languages and enjoys travelling the country and practising them, above all in pubs, restaurants and gelaterias.
Advertising posters, graffiti, shop windows, menus – with this amount of exposure from an early age it’s no surprise that most Swiss can hold a conversation in English.
But languages, like organisms, evolve and mutate. While most of the English used by Swiss marketing departments can’t be faulted – serious companies usually employ at least one native speaker – occasionally things get lost in translation. It’s clear what an “eatroom” is, but, well, you wouldn’t find one in London.
“When you look at the English that you find in non-English-speaking countries, you could say we all speak bad English quite well – and therefore we take certain liberties with the language,” Franz Andres Morrissey, a linguistics lecturer at the University of Bern, told swissinfo.ch.
“But I think the point is that when you have a language that is so widely spoken, and the vast majority of speakers are second-language speakers, you have to realise that the English language is no longer in the ownership of English speakers. This means of course that it develops in different directions.”
(Images: Christoph Balsiger; Text: Thomas Stephens)
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.