(August 22, 2012 at 7:50 am)Stue Denim Wrote:OK, first post here, so bear with me...(August 22, 2012 at 7:35 am)kılıç_mehmet Wrote: Oh, that's going to be a little bit different though. Even though they both speak german, the swiss accent is horrendously unintelligible.
I suggest you go to Switzerland, for the only german you're going to learn from tapes is Hochdeutsch. A few months living in Switzerland could cure that perhaps, developing some ear in the meantime, but it'd be best if you'd learn your german in Switzerland.
Yes that was the thing that has been bothering me since I decided to learn it. As I understood it standard german (Hochdeutsch?) is close to swiss standard german which is what I was aiming for first (used in their educational settings and their literature, which is where I would primarily use it), so no? So you think just book a flight to switzerland to learn it (Or maybe use the L-R method on swiss produced films/books, once I've decided on a dialect?), hmmm....
I live in the German part of Switzerland and I can tell you that, when it comes to standard German (Hochdeutsch), the differences between Germany and Switzerland are absolutely minimal. Moreover, most Swiss tend to speak quite slowly when speaking standard German (after all, it's not their native language, Swiss german is...), therefore it's generally not a problem to understand them and, for a novice, it's much easier than talking to someone from, say, Hamburg (and don't get me started about Austrians...
).Now, coming to Swiss German: well, it doesn't really exist. Every town, every village have their own flavour of Swiss German, so much so that it can well happen taht someone from, say, St. Gallen will have troubles understanding someone else from Wallis and viceversa. No, I'm not joking.
Here in Switzerland you can find books, courses and multimedia tools to learn Swiss German. Usually, they teach you the dialect from the Berne region, as it is considered "the most standardised" of them all. Also bear in mind that Swiss German (and its thousand different flavours) is a dialect for which, historically, there's almost zero written record and this is the main reason why there are so many flavours of it. Even in older times, written records were almost exclusively in standard German. Only recently there's been a boom of literature, music, etc. written in Swiss German.
If you come here to Switzerland and want to follow at least an introductory course, I would suggest you the ones by Migros. They're affordable and well done.
Coming to your original question whether it is possible to learn a language without attending a course: I learned German, French and Spanish this way. So yes, it is possible for everyone.
