Zurich German

Zürich German (German: Zürichdeutsch, natively Züritüütsch [ˈtsyrityːtʃ]) is the High Alemannic dialect spoken in the Canton of Zürich, Switzerland. Its areal covers most of the canton, with the exception of the parts north of the Thur and the Rhine, which belong to the areal of the northeastern (Schaffhausen and Thurgau) Swiss dialects.

Zürich German was traditionally divided into six sub-dialects, now increasingly homogenised due to larger commuting distances:

Like all Swiss German dialects, it is essentially a spoken language, whereas the written language is standard German. Likewise, there is no official orthography of the Zürich dialect. When it is written, it rarely follows the guidelines published by Eugen Dieth in his book Schwyzertütschi Dialäktschrift; in fact, only language experts know about these guidelines. Furthermore, Dieth's spelling uses a lot of diacritical marks not found on a normal keyboard. Young people often use dialect for personal messages, such as when texting with their mobile phones. As they do not have a standard way of writing they tend to blend Standard German spelling with Swiss German phrasing.