GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss government said Tuesday it will ban the use of English in Switzerland, effective 1 April starting at 15:05. The move is part of efforts to reunify the country in the wake of a divisive vote one month ago that will create a cap on immigration.
Bern had threatened to put a ban into effect but the short deadline announced Tuesday caught the nation by surprise.
Geneva remembers its French
Political decisions in Switzerland are generally taken slowly because of the consultation process. When Bern sent out a paper for consultation and saw that initial remarks were all in English, it voted to move quickly.
“It’s a dramatic step, especially given the short deadline, but it is the only way to ensure that the west and the east of the country speak to each other,” said former Swiss President Michelle Calmer-Rey of Geneva, who considers her canton to be in the south.
Calmer-Rey took pains to point out that Geneva has been looking for some months to improve strained ties with France over wine, banking and tax misunderstandings. Given the threatened withdrawal of commodities traders in the city because they speak only English and an English only they understand, French is suddenly taking on renewed importance.
Cabinet uses Romansch to decide
The current seven-member federal government reached an agreement on the English ban, she was told, during a Skype conference.
Former Swiss presidents are given a living allowance and are privy to information about urgent measures taken by the Federal Council, once their one year in office ends and they leave the cabinet.
The debate was held in Romansch in a sign of solidarity, according to the former president. It is the country’s fourth language after German, French and Italian.
Council members were not immediately available for comment. All seven cabinet members are currently out of the country meeting their counterparts in European capitals to ensure that trade, education, mustard, sausage and policing agreements remain in place despite the vote, which the EU insists is aimed at foreigners.
The right-wing PP (Parity Party) that backed the popular initiative on immigration says this is not so. GenevaLunch.com was told by a source close to the drafting of the initiative that there was concern early on that non-Swiss yodelers might attempt to join the 9,000 yodel, alphorn and flag-throwing specialists expected at Davos in June for the Federal Yodeling Festival.
yodeling is a language-neutral Swiss form of music.
There are concerns that one minister, in Bavaria for talks on sausage quotas, might not make it back before a Lufthansa strike that starts tonight. Germany has a ban on night flights to Zurich because of the noise. Switzerland some months ago banned German sausages, after complaints from Aarau about the smell.
How “No English Spoken Here” will work
English will not be allowed in companies, at events or on the street in an effort to encourage French-, German- and Italian-speakers to return to an
earlier system where each tried to speak the other’s language in the interest of diplomacy.
The multilingual Swiss have long prided themselves on getting along despite their cultural differences, thanks to a shared army tradition and a willingness to buy bread and cheese in at least three and sometimes four languages.
The rapid growth of English in recent years is mainly the result of housing speculation that brought in a flood of wealthy foreigners whose shared languages are real estate and international English. Housing sales and rentals are the first area to be affected, with hefty fines for anyone caught asking about “square metres” or “prices”.
Within hours English will be banned on trains and other public transport, to be followed by pubs and clubs.
MySwitzerland, the national tourism office, when contacted by GenevaLunch.com, said it has applied for a new trademark, HelvetHelvet, but it expects to see sales drop sharply when it redirects traffic from its English pages to Korean, hoping no one will notice the difference. The director told us that he put in an emergency call to Bern asking if this critical industry, which accounts for 27% of the economy, could continue to use Australian, which not everyone considers English. The minister to whom he spoke recognized a word as English when he listened to an Australian tape and the idea was nixed.
Local English media in the Lake Geneva area finally joined forces in an undercover bid to buy Le Tempo newspaper only this week, hiding behind a confidentiality agreement. Local radio WTNT said it must close or play only the Swiss national anthem, not really a choice, and it expects the A1 accident rate to rise sharply as motorists try to drive without the BBC. A new newspaper was obliged to black out all but the fortunate “Le” in its banner, having gone to press a day early in the hope of squeezing one more issue out before the English ban.
GenevaLunch, for its part, fortunately opened a wine site this week and will redirect traffic there, because everyone knows wine allows you to speak other languages with no prior training. Santé!
By midnight the shutdown will be complete, as local media in English are asked to eat their words.
Before we go, there are rumours that the CGN steamboat company stands to make millions, taking crowds to a place in the middle of Lake Geneva, where they can say what they like. We cannot confirm this report is accurate, however.
Adieu.