Do not cross the railway lines
Some readers asked about the languages spoken in Switzerland, hence this post. The simple answer, without getting into a discussion about Swiss-German, is that there are three official languages: Deutsch, Français and Italiano. The lower panel of the photo shows a detail of a locomotive with the name of the Swiss railway system in these languages (Villigen is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland).
SBB Schweizerische Bundesbahn
CFF Chemins de Fer Fédéraux Suisses
FFS Ferrovie Federali Svizzere
English is widely used in many areas, as evidenced by the sign in the train station in Brugg (top panel), the closest real town to Villigen. There are actually four national languages, the fourth being Rhaeto-Rumantsch which is spoken by some 50000 people and is not included on the sign. For more information, try these language related pages (in English) at swissworld.org and swissinfo.
Es gab ein paar Fragen bezüglich der Landessprachen in der Schweiz. Es gibt drei offiziele Sprachen (Deutsch, Français and Italiano) und ein vierte nationale Sprache Rhaeto-Rumantsch.
20070125
3 comments:
Intersting how the warning sign is four words in German & Italian, five in French and six in English!
Indeed! On the other hand, there was a discussion somewhere about the lengths of the different language versions of the Harry Potter books, and as far as I can recall, the German and French versions are longer than the English version. I can't find a link to this story, but I'm sure I read it somewhere. Can anyone here point me to the right place?
I have to comment on my own comment to say that my statement about the relative lenghts of the different language versions of the Harry Potter books seems to be false.
Post a Comment