General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I am Latina but pass as White [View all]DFW
(60,144 posts)I'm there a lot (was just there last week up until yesterday), and Romansch is the one language spoken there that I don't speak. There are about 100,000 native speakers of Romansch, and about 6 million Swiss of other linguistic backgrounds. There are also over 1 million foreigners living in Switzerland, largely from neighboring countries, like France, Germany, Italy and Austria with a liberal smattering of Brits and, newly, Russians. Always a few Americans, Canadians, Chinese, Japanese, etc. etc. Lots of Swiss-foreign marriages, as you might imagine, though Romansch is mostly spoken out in the boonies (Scuol region), so less of that. One of my acquaintances there looks Japanese, like his mom, but his first language in Züri-düütsch (Zürich dialect of Swiss German), and then comes high German, Japanese and then English.