Good Morning, Guete Morge

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If you are wondering, my good morning greeting is also in Swiss German. Yes we have our own language, which only the Swiss really understand and speak, although there are a few isolated cases like me that speak it all day. Even my cat Tabby only meows in Swiss German. I got very artistic this morning and decided to take a photo of my new plant, kalanchoe, in the snow. I was wandering around the flower shop yesterday taking photos and decided to buy something. I quite like these kalanchoe, need water only once a week and flower for a month at least and are also quite reasonable in price. My last one has now lost the flowers, but is now recuperating from the exhaustion, and I am sure it will flower again.

Today is one of those days that I do not like so much, because there is too much happening. I like simple, quiet, stressless days when nothing special happens. It started when I had to stop hugging the bed and leave it because it is the day when my bed gets fresh linen. It is a shared job, but nevertheless has to be done. This meant rising at 7.20 instead of 7.30 – oh the inconvenience of it all. Today was also the day of my special delivery of medicine. I ordered it for Thursday morning and at 8.30 there was a ring at the door. I had to sign for it. These days it is all fully electronic. I get a lookalike mobile phone screeen which I have to sign with a special pen, all very electronic. I really wonder that those signatures are accepted, they look so shaky and illegible when done.

The next task is to wave goodbye to Mr. Swiss as he has a doc appointment. When I have finished blogging, I have windows to clean. I know I seem to be the perfect housewife, but last week I gave window cleaning a miss because I was laid up with the dreaded, coughing and sneezing everywhere. And what’s in a window cleaning, takes not even an hour (due to my regular habit of cleaning windows) and so I have time to relax afterwards. This afternoon I go to the doc for my driving mental test, to see if I am still capable of driving a car without being a danger to all other drivers and pedestrians. They do not trust people in Switzerland when they are 70 years old. Mr. Swiss has done this a couple of times with no problem, and full marks. He is 8 years older than me, so of course what he can do, I should also be able to do.

Feldbrunnen to Langendorf 25.01 (1)

Our snow is still with us, but only because it is too cold to melt.Took the photo yesterday whilst waiting at the barrier, as the local road train was on its way.

Have fun everyone. Am not sure of my time table today. Will be back but am not sure if I will be doing daily prompting or not today. It depends on how long the doc wants to test me this afternoon. Mr. Swiss says it takes about half an hour, but it might take longer with me. I speak the language ok, but when it comes to numbers as an answer, I could get confused. I think anyone that speaks in a foreign tongue perfers their own language where numbers are concerned.

 

17 thoughts on “Good Morning, Guete Morge”

  1. Good morning to you, too. It’s almost morning here, but I’m going to go to sleep now because this is the very end of my awake time. I’ve been lured into this late night (or early morning depending on how you want to look at it) by a book.

    Good luck at the doctor!!

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    • No doctor, she cannot make a decision and I must see the specialist, but it does not really bother me. I rarely go to bed later than midnight, usually around 11.30. I do not like laying in bed too long in the morning.

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    • I can count in many languages, but I have discovered that counting in your mother tongue is most natural. You can actually see the numbers when you say them. German is for me with the extra complication because it is all said backwards. Twenty-six becomes Six and twenty for example. I once had a chef from Pakistan and his mother tongue was Urdo. He would count in his own language – fascinating.

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  4. While I usually have no problem making myself understood in my “Schriftdeutsch”, I often don’t understand Swiss German answers. Once I was waiting at a bus-stop with a 4-year-old boy. He asked me something and I suspected it might be important, e. g. how to get home. I asked him to wait for someone else to come along, as I didn’t understand him. When a lady approached, I asked her to help him and she did. Then he pointed at me and asked her, “What language does she speak?” The lady smiled and said, “Dütsch!” He obviously didn’t believe her, because he stared at me in wonder.

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    • I learnt Hochdeutsch in school in London, two years. No-one told me the Swiss had their own version and when I arrived in Switzerland I was sure i had jumped off the plane at the wrong stop. My first expeirnece was travelling in a Zürich tram and hearing the conversations around me – null Ahnung. After 50 years of Swiss life i have got it all worked out. It is quite easy really. Advantage (my iidea). Do not bother with conjugations of words, the Swiss seem to drop the last part of the word in any case, where it all happens. Der, die and das usw. – just say “d” and forget the rest, it works. .Ow-ah is also a useful phrase. Does not really mean anything, but gives the impression you know what it is all about. Understanding children is always the most difficult because they are under the impression that Swiss German is a world language, especially the particular dialect the speak (and there are a few hundred, if not thousands). I speak Solothurn german, which is not such a popular dialect and you can get confused with a Berner. However, because I speak the dialect, many are of the impression that I am dutch or some other nationality because english people do not usually speak other languages than english – nid wahr? 🙂

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      • Well, how do you define usually? I know plenty of exceptions to the rule in your last sentence, literary translators from all over the world speaking perfect German. They know all the correct definite articles and case endings. I admire them for that, I really do! 🙂

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          • I know the rules of german grammar, not easy, but with all the declinations learnt from my German classes and the grammar books. I am just a lazy speaker. Sometimes I get it right and sometimes not. I just speak and I have no idea how it all sounds really. Mr. Swiss says I can speak quite well, but of course you hear something somewhere, it is not my mother tongue. I have often heard english speaking very good german on TV and I admire them for it. My problem is I speak many languges and none perfect.

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          • Thanks. If I cared about making mistakes, I would give up. I always have something to say it seems. German is difficult, but I learnt russian 12 years and that is not easy. 6 cases, no articles, and everything done with the declinations on the nouns – something like latin.

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      • That’s how I survived (I wasn’t really in danger) in Italy in 2004. Because I speak (bad) Italian and, at the time, had that magenta hair that was popular in Germany, many Italian people thought I was German. Everyone KNOWS Americans cannot speak any language but English. I didn’t dispute their assumption since, in those days, many Americans were pretending to be Canadian when they traveled. I thought it was cool that I could pretend to be German. “Tedesco?” “Si.” Comments in a train compartment… 😀

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    • Not all of them. I have two sides to the apartment. I do one side one week and the other side the next week, so it is every second week. I have a super cleaning system and it is all done with a special liquid and the window wiper. Takes only about 30-40 minutes.

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