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Swiss German Guide

2025-11-08

Updated 2025-11-13

This guide highlights important differences from High German to Zurich Swiss German ("Swiss German" for brevity from now on, though it's only one of many dialects). It aspires to represent as many of these as possible in a relatively small set of examples. To resolve ambiguity, the examples are longer than in typical vocabulary lists. Most entries include both English and High German translations. The translations should be unambiguously valid from Swiss German to the other languages; they may not be in the other direction.

You can guess a fair amount of Swiss German based on High German. High German is the written and official language for Swiss German speakers and is easier to teach (and certify) in a formal setting. This doesn't imply that High German is higher status or more useful in daily Swiss life, though.

Swiss German is a spoken language, so this text-only format is severely lacking; you should have some way to listen to the language. A logical improvement for this page would be to include audio clips for the Swiss German terms. There is no standardized way to write (or even speak) Swiss German.

You can find a TSV file of all the examples here.

The rest of this document puts the examples into some sort of narrative.

We'll present examples here as

• Mapping High German to Swiss German
• Articles
• Pronouns
• Adjective Endings
• New Grammar and Constructions
• Verbs
• Numbers and Time
• More Vocabulary
• Technical Details

Mapping High German to Swiss German

There are several common patterns between corresponding words in High German and Swiss German. Not all of these appear well in writing.

Swiss German words are often missing an "n" at the end, compared to the corresponding High German word:

In some cases this isn't even consistently done, even within Zurich Swiss German, particularly with some first-person verb conjugations:

You often (ironically) also lose "ch".

Other letters can drop off the end as well:

You will also notice a lot more hard "ch" sounds (Like Scottish "loch"). When "ch" or "k" appears in a High German word, the corresponding Swiss German word almost always has a hard "ch", though it's often still written as it is in High German.

If you do want a "k" sound as in English, this becomes "gg" when written.

"st" often becomes "scht" (not just at the beginning of words).

"sp" similarly often becomes "schp" (also including inside words).

"b" and "p" are closer together, as are "t" and "d", so often these change relative to High German, when written.

Vowels often shift.

"i" often becomes "ie", with two vowels sounds (a diphthong).

Many words already written with "ie" in High German are also pronounced this way.

Sometimes "ie" becomes "üü", though!

"e" often becomes "aa" or "ä".

Written "ä" can sound different, sometimes something between High German "ä/e" and "a".

But also sometimes a longer sound more similar to High German "ä/e".

"i" can become "ü".

"u" often becomes the two-syllable "uä" or "ue".

"au" often becomes "uu":

"eu" often becomes or "ü" or "üü":

"ei" often becomes "ii" or "i" (a long vowel sound):

"o" can become "u":

The "-ig" ending usually sounds more like "-ik" in English, even when it would sound like a soft "-ich" ending in High German. The "-ung" ending in High German often becomes "-ig" in Swiss German.

Many common prepositions change in a predictable way.

These also apply when used as verb prefixes. Other prefixes are commonly shortened by dropping the vowel.

Place names also change in similar ways.

Articles

Swiss German uses the same three genders as High German, and the nominative, accusative, and dative cases (not the genitive). The accusative form of words is the same as the nominative, outside of a few pronouns.

Swiss German neuter articles and possessives sometimes feature an "s" on the end, like High German adjectives sometimes do.

The definite articles in the nominative and accusative look like abbreviated versions of the High German nominative ones: The feminine "d" can also be "di" when there is an adjective following it. See below.

The indefinite articles in the nominative differ more.

As in High German, you add a "k" (but pronounced as a hard "ch") to the front to negate these. Here the pronunciation also changes back to something closer to High German.

The definite articles in the dative also look like the High German ones, with either the first or last letter chopped off.

The indefinite, dative articles:

Pronouns

In the nominative, the only surprising pronoun is "mir" meaning "we".

The accusative pronouns are either the same as High German or the Swiss German dative form.

The dative pronouns:

Inversions

In situations, like questions, where the subject follows the verb, the verb and subject often combine into a single, combined form. This happens often in informal, spoken English, for instance "gimme" or "giv'em" instead of "give me" or "give them", respectively.

The inverted form of "du" can just be "du", but is often nothing, so Swiss German is "pro drop" in this sense.

The "ich" and especially "mir" (we) forms can sound quite distinct from the two-word inversions you'd expect from High German.

Nominative:

Inversions are also common with reflexive pronouns. This includes the both the accusative (note that mich and dich drop the 'ch' when inverted)

and the dative.

Possessive Pronouns

Nominative and accusative look the same here, so we can just give nominative and dative examples. A regular pattern applies to form feminine, neuter, plural, and dative forms from the masculine nominative form, so we don't have to give all 64 examples (8 subjects x 4 object genders x 2 cases).

Demonstrative Pronouns

Relative pronouns

You use "wo" for all relative pronouns in Swiss German.

Adjective endings

As in High German, there are quite a few adjective ending rules to learn. However, there is no distinction between the nominative and accusative, the dative is almost uniform, and there is no genitive! Some forms can either be nothing or "-i".

New Grammar and Constructions

Swiss German has a few points of grammar and constructions that don't appear in High German.

go

When coming or going in order to do something (a verb), add "go" before the verb. This can look superficially like English sentences like "I'm going to go work", but this comparison is more confusing than helpful.

Tuä + verb

One can use "tuä" as a auxiliary verb. It doesn't carry a huge amount of meaning but can indicate something is done more regularly.

N-liaisons

We noted that Swiss German tends to drop "n"s, compared to High German. This leaves a lot of vowels at the ends of words, so often an "n" will be introduced to make things flow better. (This also commonly appears in the "ich" inverted verb forms below).

Verbs

The standard conjugation only has four forms. All the plural forms are the same!

"du" forms where the stem ends in "s" often add an extra "i" to flow better.

Swiss German only uses the compound past tense - there is no preterit (not even "ich war"). Interestingly "gsi" is more regular than the High German "gewesen".

Past participles work fairly similarly to High German, except that verbs starting with "g-", "k-", "ch-", "b-" , "p-", "d-" ,"t-", or "z-" don't have the "g-" prefix you might expect in the past participle.

We list 6 forms for several important verbs.

Similarly, "hören" picks up a "g", but be aware that "löse" is more common for active listening.

You will often see the Subjunctive II version of "to want" (e.g. "wett" instead of "will"). This is more polite, as in English ("I would like").

Similarly, the Subjunctive II version of "should" is common.

A few more verbs which differ notably from High German:

There are some fun verbs for taking an action in some sort of leisurely fashion.

Numbers and Time

This section includes my favorite Swiss word, for 80, with 4 consonants in a row!

Numbers in Swiss German have different forms as nouns. These forms are used for times, ages, and numbered things. For numbers 3 and smaller, these are the same as the normal forms.

Feminine and netural endings (note "Tram" is neuter in Swiss German):

Masculine endings:

Two of these appear inside the names for the traditional morning and afternoon snacks.

Some expressions around time use different prepositions than High German.

You don't use the noun forms for "between".

But you do for "until".

More Vocabulary

Everyday Phrases

Nouns

Plural forms are quite often the same as the singular, about 60% of the time. Feminine words often take "-e" and neuter ones often take "-er". Often our friend "n" will appear, optionally, in plural forms of feminine words, allowing you to add an extra vowel to the end of a word that already ends in one. Stems also often change. Plurals of foreign words will sometimes end in "s", like in High German.

Swiss German uses the diminutive "-li" extensively, and with some words almost exclusively. As in with the High German "-chen", these words are always neuter. There is a mountain near Zürich with the extremely Swiss name of Vrenelisgärtli!

You will also often see abbreviations just ending in "-i". These use the same genders as the longer words they come from.

You even see what seems like both of these at once for the Swiss's favorite thing, a piece of chocolate:

Some common words are very different from High German.

There are plenty of French words (pronounced with different stress, usually!)

Other Vocabulary

These little words may make the biggest difference!

Several to do with location:

Several to do with negatives:

Many variants of "something" or "someone" use variants of "öppis"

A few more very Swiss adjectives and adverbs. A couple of these I don't know if I can translate other than to say they are in the class of slang terms that mean "good", or "cool".

And that's it!

There is of course much more to know, but my hope is that the above highlights the most striking differences from High German to Zurich Swiss German.

Technical Details and Conventions

This page is generated from a template with some Python scripts (see the source for this site as linked in the footer).

The main data source is this TSV file, which contains a superset of the translations here.

Interesting usage and differences from High German should be shown directly in the examples, not relying on the narrative above or other comments. Clarify by using longer examples, e.g. since "mir" can mean both "we" and "to me", include entries like "mir sind" and "mit mir".

A given Swiss German string should only appear in a single entry. Entries can have multiple strings in each language. No tabs or slashes are allowed. Any of the English or High German strings must be a valid translation of any of the Swiss German strings. This covers variations both in spelling (which should only be relevant for Swiss German), interchangeable strings in the source language (e.g. "doch" and "moll" in Swiss German), and multiple valid translations in the target languages.

Strings should not be capitalized, except for full sentences (which should then end with punctuation), and words which are always capitalized.

Parenthesized expressions should generally be avoided in the examples, preferring examples which don't require them, or multiple valid translations. If included, entries should be valid, up to whitespace, as if individual strings with and without the parenthetical expressions.

This guide is not self-consistent with respect to Swiss German orthography. In general, when choosing between equally-valid spelling options, prefer:

• shorter forms over longer ones
• "aa" over "ah" (gaats)
• "e" over "ä" (wie), but both when the "ä" sound between High German "e" and "ä" occurs.
• "o" over "oo" (cho)
• "oi" over "eu" (ois)
• "d" over "t" (Dütsch)
• "b" over "p" (Bire)
• "scht" and "schp" over "st" and "sp", respectively