Wolfgang
Thank you for those interesting comments. I often used to marvel how, when in Zurich for instance, there would be no problem reading a newspaper and a great problem talking to somebody on the street!
For some years I worked for a company located in Aachen. My co-workers, after learning of my Swiss background, often would comment that SwissGerman is not a language. No, it is a disease of the throat!
Seriously, in order to reproduce the sounds the human mouth has to make in order to speak SwissGerman, I really believe you need to learn this as your motherlanguage as a child. Otherwise you never get it right. My father (SwissGerman motherlanguage even though he was born in America) would speak to my grandparents perfectly. When I would join the talking, everybody would have a kind laugh and joke at the "Fremdschweitzer" in the family!
Thank you for helping me recall some nice memories.
Mark