The linguistic situation of Zurich

National framework and Zurich figures

Switzerland recognises four national languages, German, French, Italian and Romansh, of which the first three are official languages of the Confederation for all purposes and Romansh for dealings with Romansh speakers (Articles 4 and 70(1) of the Federal Constitution). The Federal Statistical Office measures the language landscape through the annual structural survey, in which respondents aged fifteen and over may name several main languages. For 2020 it reported that 62 per cent of the permanent resident population named German or Swiss German as a main language, 23 per cent French, 8 per cent Italian and 0.5 per cent Romansh, while 23 per cent named a non-national language. Because multiple answers are permitted, the figures add up to more than one hundred per cent. English showed the strongest growth of any language: its share as a main language rose from 4.5 per cent in 2010 to 6.7 per cent in 2020, most of it in combination with another language. The share of English speakers was slightly higher in the French-speaking region than in the German-speaking region.¹ Later figures confirm the trend. According to the Federal Statistical Office as reported in February 2025, 23 per cent of the employed population used English at work in 2023, which placed English close to French at 28 per cent and far ahead of Italian at 8 per cent. The Office described the growth of non-national main languages as marked.²

The canton of Zurich shows the same pattern in a more pronounced form. A study by the cantonal statistical office found that around 82 per cent of the canton’s population aged fifteen and over named German as a main language. English had become the second most frequent main language with eight per cent, ahead of Italian with six and Albanian with four per cent. The historical comparison is striking: in 1970 less than one per cent of the canton’s population spoke English as a main language, in 2010 six per cent did, and in 2016 eight per cent. The study also found that multilingualism was increasing among the young, with a quarter of those aged fifteen to twenty-four speaking several languages fluently.³ In the city of Zurich the share of English is higher still. For the pooled years 2019 to 2021, 74.5 per cent of residents aged fifteen and over named German or Swiss German as a main language and 13.9 per cent English, followed by Italian with 6.1, French with 4.8 and Spanish with 4.4 per cent. Almost forty per cent of city residents regularly spoke two languages at home, at work or in education. Among those who spoke Swiss German at home, 94 per cent also spoke it at work, while 37 per cent used English professionally as well.⁴

The linguistic figures reflect the composition of the population. At the end of 2025 the canton of Zurich counted 455,800 foreign residents, 29 per cent of its population. Germans formed the largest group with 22 per cent of all foreign residents, which corresponds to roughly one hundred thousand people, followed by Italians with 14 and Portuguese with 7 per cent.⁵ The German community in Zurich is thus larger than the population of most Swiss towns. Its members speak the standard language and are the most visible reminder that Zurich belongs to a German-speaking area extending far beyond its borders. The English-speaking population, by contrast, is composed of several groups: native speakers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Ireland, India and other Commonwealth countries, and a much larger number of people of other origins for whom English is the language of work and of daily life in an international environment.

Diglossia: Standard German and Züritüütsch

The German-speaking Swiss live in a situation that linguists describe as diglossia, meaning the functional division between two varieties of the same language. Swiss German dialects are used in almost all spoken communication, while Standard German, in its Swiss form, is the language of writing and of certain formal spoken settings such as parliamentary debates, school lessons, news broadcasts and court hearings. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland speaks of a mediale Diglossie, a division by medium: dialect for speaking, Standard German for writing. The figures of the federal census of 2000 illustrate how deeply the pattern is rooted. At that time 85.1 per cent of German speakers used dialect in daily life, while 56.6 per cent stated that they never spoke Standard German orally.⁶ Since the rise of text messaging and social media, dialect has entered written communication as well, although it remains excluded from legal documents, official correspondence and contracts.

The workplace figures of the Federal Statistical Office show the same division from another angle. In 2020, 83 per cent of the employed in the German-speaking region used Swiss German at work and 43 per cent Standard German, while English was used by 21 per cent. Over the decade from 2010, the use of Swiss German at work declined slightly at national level, from 67 to 63 per cent, while the use of Standard German rose from 32 to 34 per cent.⁷ The slight shift towards Standard German reflects the internationalisation of the labour market. When a team includes colleagues from Germany, Austria or further afield, meetings are held in Standard German or English, so that the dialect retreats into the coffee break and the corridor. The canton’s own information for newcomers summarises the rule: Standard German is used in all written communication, while dialect dominates everyday speech, and newcomers may speak Standard German and ask to be answered in it.⁸

Züritüütsch, the dialect of the city and canton, belongs to the High Alemannic group. It is the dialect most frequently heard in the national media and in advertising, partly because of the size of the Zurich population and partly because of the concentration of broadcasting and publishing in the city. Its speakers regard it as the natural way of speaking, while speakers from other regions sometimes perceive it as the voice of the economic centre, faster and more assertive than the dialects of Bern or central Switzerland. For newcomers the dialect presents a real obstacle. Germans who move to Zurich understand Standard German perfectly but often find themselves excluded from the informal conversations in which relationships are built. Some report that their attempts to imitate the dialect are received with more irritation than their Standard German.⁹ The linguistic boundary between Swiss and Germans in Zurich thus concerns belonging, since both sides understand each other perfectly well. Its consequences for business relationships are examined further below.

The dialect has also been the object of scholarly care in Zurich for more than a century and a half. The Schweizerisches Idiotikon, the great dictionary of Swiss German, was founded in 1862. It documents the Alemannic dialects of Switzerland from the late Middle Ages to the present and is one of the national dictionaries supported by the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences.¹⁰ The first volumes appeared under the title “gesammelt auf Veranstaltung der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zürich”, edited by Friedrich Staub and Ludwig Tobler.¹¹ The existence of such an institution illustrates the self-confidence of the dialect, which its speakers regard as a language variety with its own history and its own dignity.

The political weight of the dialect

Since the 1930s the dialect has also carried political weight. After the First World War had weakened the prestige of Germany, and above all after 1933, the dialect was deliberately cultivated as part of the Geistige Landesverteidigung, the intellectual defence of the country against National Socialist Germany, and became a marker of Swiss identity and of distance from the northern neighbour.¹² A second wave, often called the Mundartwelle, carried the dialect in the second half of the twentieth century into politics, the churches, the schools and the mass media. In recent decades the cantonal electorate has intervened directly. On 15 May 2011 the voters of the canton of Zurich approved the popular initiative “Ja zur Mundart im Kindergarten”, which made dialect the principal language of instruction in kindergarten. Since August 2012 Standard German has been limited there to situations with a clear connection to the standard language, such as songs, verses and role play.¹³ Such decisions show that the dialect is treated as a public good, defended at the ballot box.

For the financial centre the political weight of the dialect has two faces. It strengthens the social cohesion and the sense of local identity that make Zurich a stable place in which to hold assets. At the same time, it raises the threshold for foreign professionals who wish to integrate fully. Many international banks and insurers in Zurich have responded by making English their internal working language, a practice that allows them to recruit worldwide but also creates a parallel professional world that is only loosely connected to the local society. The tension between these two worlds is a recurring theme in the discussion of Zurich’s attractiveness for foreign talent.

Notes

1. Federal Statistical Office (BFS), Sprachenlandschaft in der Schweiz (2022), chapter 2 “Hauptsprachen”, https://www.swissstats.bfs.admin.ch/data/webviewer/appId/ch.admin.bfs.swissstat/article/issue220122022200-05/package. The other most frequent non-national languages in 2020 were Portuguese (3.5 per cent), Albanian (2.8 per cent), Spanish and the Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian group (each 2.4 per cent). ↩
2. SRF News, “Nicht-Landessprachen auf dem Vormarsch”, 17 February 2025, https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/englisch-als-arbeitssprache-nicht-landessprachen-auf-dem-vormarsch. The report also states that 39 per cent of the population used several languages at work and that 44 per cent of children grew up with more than one language at home. ↩
3. Statistisches Amt des Kantons Zürich, Julie Craviolini, “Fremdsprachen und Zuwanderung: Die Soziodemografie der Fremdsprachen im Kanton Zürich”, statistik.info 2018/03, https://www.web.statistik.zh.ch/ogd/daten/ressourcen/KTZH_00000615_00001527.pdf. ↩
4. Stadt Zürich, Wie spricht Zürich? Daten und Fakten aus der Strukturerhebung, presentation to the Zürcher Migrationskonferenz 2023, https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/dam/web/de/politik-verwaltung/kommunikation-und-transparenz/sprache/wie-spricht-zuerich-2023.pdf, based on the pooled BFS structural surveys 2019–2021. ↩
5. Migrationsamt des Kantons Zürich, Migration im Kanton Zürich: Zahlen und Fakten 2025, https://www.zh.ch/content/dam/zhweb/bilder-dokumente/organisation/sicherheitsdirektion/migrationsamt/zahlen_und_fakten_2025.pdf (reference date 31 December 2025). ↩
6. Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), “Deutsch”, version of 24 January 2018, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/articles/011194/2018-01-24/. The article also describes the gradual transition of the written language from Alemannic to Early New High German forms between about 1350 and 1650. ↩
7. Federal Statistical Office (BFS), Sprachenlandschaft in der Schweiz (2022), chapter 4 “Sprachen bei der Arbeit”, https://www.swissstats.bfs.admin.ch/data/webviewer/appId/ch.admin.bfs.swissstat/article/issue220122022200-07/package. The share of English at work was 21 per cent for Switzerland as a whole and 22 per cent in the tertiary sector. ↩
8. Kanton Zürich, “Sprache – Informationen für Neuzugezogene”, https://www.zh.ch/de/migration-integration/willkommen/deutsch/sprache.html. The page also points out that German skills are a condition for the extension of residence permits and for a settlement permit. ↩
9. SRF Radio 1, Nadia Zollinger and André Perler, “Deutsche in der Schweiz: «Jeder und jede kann Schweizerdeutsch lernen!»”, 18 August 2022, https://www.srf.ch/radio-srf-1/mundart/deutsche-in-der-schweiz-jeder-und-jede-kann-schweizerdeutsch-lernen. A German interviewee who had learned the dialect reported that feedback formulated in Swiss German was better received than the same feedback in Standard German, and that some Swiss believe Germans should not attempt the dialect at all. ↩
10. Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW), “Schweizerisches Idiotikon”, https://www.sagw.ch/de/foerderung/nationale-woerterbuecher/schweizerisches-idiotikon: “Gegründet wurde das Schweizerische Idiotikon 1862.” The dictionary is carried by the Verein für das Schweizerdeutsche Wörterbuch. ↩
11. The Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania), entries for Ludwig Tobler, https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/who/Tobler%2c%20Ludwig%2c%201827%2d1895: “Schweizerisches Idiotikon: Wörterbuch der schweizerdeutschen Sprache. Gesammelt auf Veranstaltung der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zürich unter Beihülfe aus allen Kreisen des Schweizervolkes” (J. Huber, 1881), with Friedrich Staub among the contributors. ↩
12. HLS, Manfred Gsteiger et al., “Dialekte”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/024595/. The article also notes that before the First World War more than thirty per cent of the population of Zurich were foreigners, mostly Germans, which fuelled fears for the dialect, and that in the second half of the twentieth century Swiss German advanced into all areas of public life, including politics, church, school and the mass media. ↩
13. Kanton Zürich, media release of 30 November 2011, “Unterrichtssprache im Kindergarten neu geregelt”, https://www.zh.ch/de/news-uebersicht/medienmitteilungen/2011/11/311_unterrichtssprache.html. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.