Languages
The four national languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian and Romansh. Native speakers number about 64% (4.6 million) for German (mostly Swiss German dialects), 20% (1.5 million) for French (mostly Swiss French, but including some Franco-Provençal dialects), 7% (0.5 million, mostly Swiss Italian, but including Insubric dialects) for Italian and less than 0.5% (35,000) for Romansh.
The non-official language with the largest group of native speakers is Serbo-Croatian with 103,000 speakers in 2000, followed by Albanian with 95,000, Portuguese with 89,500, Spanish with 77,500, English with 73,000, Macedonian 61,300, and a total of 173,000 speakers of other languages, amounting to roughly 10% of the population with a native language not among the four official languages.
Read more about this topic: Ethnic Groups In Switzerland
Famous quotes containing the word languages:
“I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of nations.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“It is time for dead languages to be quiet.”
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972)
“The trouble with foreign languages is, you have to think before your speak.”
—Swedish proverb, trans. by Verne Moberg.