Travel with Angela Lansbury: Secrets Of Swiss German language, restaurant words, raclette, and cooking spaezli

Monday, June 29, 2026

Secrets Of Swiss German language, restaurant words, raclette, and cooking spaezli

Can you recognize the words for bread and butter and breakfast in German?

Learning German

I have been learning German on Duolingo. I can recognize bread, butter and breakfast. But now I am planning to go to German speaking Switzerland.

Swiss German

What's different about Swiss German? In some ways, from an English speaker's point of view, Swiss German is German made easy. Let's start with the easy bits.

Firstly, Swiss German is easier for English speakers to read because it uses the double s instead of the vertical squiggly s which most English speakers don't have on their laptop keyboard.

Swiss German speakers are likely to understand standard German, so learning German will help you to be understood when speaking, as well as helping you to read signs and menus. In fact there's a hybrid language, Swiss standard German, which is used for writing and formal situations, which is closer to standard German spoken in Germany.

Swiss German is also spoken in Liechtenstein, which is sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria.

French in German Speaking Switzerland

You will probably recognize

fondue (literally melted, usually melted cheese in a large pot for dipping meat and/or vegetables)

and chocolate for dipping fruit

raclette - melted cheese (often raclette cheese) served on boiled potatoes, or on bread as a snack, with black tea or white wine

They use the French word merci for thank you.

The word for little is li added on the end of a word, notably for bun (little bread), kitten (little cat), hundli for puppy (little dog), like the English doggy and dolly.

Swiss-German - English

Brot - bread / loaf

Brötli - little bread (bun?) or roll

Hend Si ... ? - Do you have ...?

merci - thank you

merci vilmal - thank you very much (literally thanks many times)

rösti - (Same as standard German) grated, fried potato, like American hash bowns

Hash browns, also spelled hashed browns and hashbrowns, are a popular American breakfast food consisting of finely julienned potatoes that have been fried until golden brown. Hash browns are a staple breakfast item at diners in North America, where they are often fried on a large, common cooktop or grill. Wikipedia. Julienned means cutting into long thin strips.

Spätzli In Switzerland they are called Spätzli or Chnöpfli, in Germany Spätzle - is an egg noodle dish, with pieces of a lumpy shape.

According to wiki, it is the Swabian and Alsacian diminutive of Spatz, thus literally 'little sparrow'.^[3] Some linguists derive it from the word “clump”, meaning dough which tends to form clots.^[4]