{"id":2135,"date":"2021-10-01T10:54:41","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T10:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/?p=2135"},"modified":"2021-10-07T10:57:35","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T10:57:35","slug":"october-2021-goodnews-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/2021\/10\/01\/october-2021-goodnews-editorial\/","title":{"rendered":"october 2021 \u2013 goodnews editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Language barriers<\/strong><\/h3>\n

We Swiss are very fond of our dialects. We believe that they are ours to keep. We police them. To prevent anyone from learning them (though a few courses exist), we scrupulously make sure that our most vulnerable immigrants\u00a0are not provided with enough lessons to educate them beyond a very basic linguistic level. More language classes are needed for the shy vendor of Surprise<\/em> (a mag sold by the homeless) outside our local supermarket, who has no colloquial practice with natives like me. He was trying to tell me that my bike rack was not up. Very thoughtful. My friend Brigitte, who immigrated to Switzerland over forty years ago and has long since held a Swiss passport, complains that to this day she is always picked on because of her language. Her Swiss German is not Swiss German enough, her German not German enough. And where in Germany is she from? Quite impertinent, of course \u2018without meaning any harm\u2019. Even without an office or law to keep Swiss German dialects clean, Germans and Austrians must follow an embarrassing protocol if they want to make themselves at home with us. Swiss German is taboo! Please only understand, don\u2019t speak our language, you wouldn\u2019t be able to anyway, hardly anyone who didn’t grow up here can. There is a grace period, for reasons of civility, for German-speaking foreigners who do not live right on the border. The fact that Swiss work colleagues repeatedly fall back into their dialects with their countryfolk instead of using the German language is part of it. But we don\u2019t want to impose \u2018proper German\u2019 on our former neighbours beyond what is necessary. What are they thinking? Brigitte asked me, in disgust. That their German is that good? Our fellow citizens from the north and the east have long opened to our dialects. They understand us well. So why strain the German language any longer? While they regale us with their own language, we speak ours, giving them a better chance to integrate and interact with us. And, as a bonus, we may be a little humbler. Or should we all speak English? Learning languages is worthwhile. Unless you live in Switzerland, where everyone automatically seems to think they know everything better than you do.
\nToo bad, that.<\/p>\n

Linguistically yours,
\nSusanne G. Seiler<\/p>\n

\n

Eternity<\/strong><\/h3>\n

He who binds to himself a joy
\nDoes the winged life destroy;
\nBut he who kisses the joy as it flies
\nLives in Eternity\u2019s sunrise.<\/p>\n

William Blake<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Language barriers We Swiss are very fond of our dialects. We believe that they are ours to keep. We police them. To prevent anyone from learning them (though a few courses exist), we scrupulously make sure that our most vulnerable immigrants\u00a0are not provided with enough lessons to educate them beyond a very basic linguistic level.Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2135"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2138,"href":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions\/2138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gaiamedia.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}