History
The percentage of non-national tongues spoken as a first language in Swiss homes has risen dramatically during the past half century, from less than one percent in 1950 to nine percent in 2000, mostly at the expense of German. The native languages of Swiss residents from 1950 to 2000, in percentages, were as follows:
| Year | German | French | Italian | Romansh | other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 63.7 | 20.4 | 6.5 | 0.5 | 9.0 |
| 1990 | 63.6 | 19.2 | 7.6 | 0.6 | 8.9 |
| 1980 | 65.0 | 18.4 | 9.8 | 0.8 | 6.0 |
| 1970 | 64.9 | 18.1 | 11.9 | 0.8 | 4.3 |
| 1960 | 69.4 | 18.9 | 9.5 | 0.9 | 1.4 |
| 1950 | 72.1 | 20.3 | 5.9 | 1.0 | 0.7 |
Read more about this topic: Languages Of Switzerland
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)