This is great… and so true! Thanks for sharing, Cami.

Hi Ursula,

Thanks for sharing this with us (and for translating the keywords). It is hard enough to learn the standards of a more widely spoken language, so we can only imagine the intricacies of mastering a mainly spoken dialect like Bernese German!

Cheers,
The Paperblanks Team

Chrigu, la d’Gitzeni usä, diä Frömdä wei Gemschäni gschouä!

= Chrigu, let the kids loose, those strangers want to see chamois!

(Chrigu being the familiar form of the male first name Christian and very frequent, especially among farmers; kids being young goats of course, not children; and strangers meaning tourists coming to the mountains.)

Bernese German doesn’t have standardized orthography. So when we write in our mother tongue occasionally, everbody does it phonetically according to his or her personal ear or region. That’s why it’s awfully hard to read in our own language. Nevertheless, we do have written literature too, our own pantheon of singers, poets, and even novelists, next to a very rich oral tradition and flourishing spoken word scene.