Switzerland

Languages

Languages

One feature of Switzerland is the fact that it is multilingual. There are four official national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. If you grow up in Switzerland, you learn two of these languages in school. In everyday life people just usually use their mother tongue. There is a big difference in the percentage of people who speak each language:

 

  • 62.6% of the resident population speak German as their main language,
  • 22.9% speak French,
  • 8.2% speak Italian (including immigrants living in Switzerland),
  • and 0.5% speak Romansh.

 

The non-Swiss residential population also contribute to the linguistic diversity: 24.3% speak a different main language to the four Swiss national languages. 18.5% of the population speaks more than one main language. (Source: Swiss Federal Statistical Office, as at 2013).

 

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