Swiss Standard German in the context of "Rumantsch Grischun"

The four national languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian, and Romansh. German, French, and Italian maintain equal status as official languages at the national level within the federal administration of the Swiss Confederation, while Romansh is used in dealings with people who speak it. Latin is occasionally used in some formal contexts, particularly to denote the country (Confoederatio Helvetica).

In 2020, 62.3% of the population of Switzerland were native speakers of German (either Swiss or Standard German) at home; 22.8% French (mostly Swiss French, but including some Franco-Provençal dialects); 8% Italian (mostly Swiss Italian, but including Lombard); and 0.5% Romansh. The German region (Deutschschweiz) is roughly in the east, north, and centre; the French part (la Romandie) in the west; and the Italian area (Svizzera italiana) in the south. There remains a small Romansh-speaking native population in Grisons in the east. The cantons of Fribourg, Bern, and Valais are officially bilingual; Grisons is officially trilingual.

Romansh (/roʊˈmænʃ, roʊˈmɑːnʃ/ roh-MA(H)NSH; sometimes also spelled Romansch and Rumantsch) is a Romance language of the Gallo-Romance and/or Rhaeto-Romance branch of languages spoken predominantly in the Swiss canton of the Grisons (Graubünden). Romansh has been recognized as a national language of Switzerland since 1938, and as an official language in correspondence with Romansh-speaking citizens since 1996, along with German, French, and Italian. It also has official status in the canton of the Grisons alongside German and Italian and is used as the medium of instruction in schools in Romansh-speaking areas. It is sometimes grouped by linguists with Ladin and Friulian as the Rhaeto-Romance languages, though this is disputed.

Romansh is one of the descendant languages of the spoken Latin language of the Roman Empire, which by the 5th century AD replaced the Celtic and Raetic languages previously spoken in the area. Romansh retains a small number of words from these languages. Romansh has also been strongly influenced by German in vocabulary and morphosyntax. The language gradually retreated to its current area over the centuries, being replaced in other areas by Alemannic and Bavarian dialects. The earliest writing identified as Romansh dates from the 10th or 11th century, although major works did not appear until the 16th century, when several regional written varieties began to develop. During the 19th century the area where the language was spoken declined due to the industrialization of Switzerland, but the Romansh speakers had a literary revival and started a language movement dedicated to halting the decline of their language.

Standard High German (SHG), less precisely Standard German or High German (German: Standardhochdeutsch, Standarddeutsch, Hochdeutsch or, in Switzerland, Schriftdeutsch), is the umbrella term for the standardized varieties of the German language, which are used in formal contexts and for communication between different dialect areas. German is a pluricentric Dachsprache with currently three codified (or standardised) specific national varieties: German Standard German, Austrian Standard German and Swiss Standard German.

Regarding the spelling and punctuation, a recommended standard is published by the Council for German Orthography which represents the governments of all majority and minority German-speaking countries and dependencies. Adherence is obligatory for government institutions, including schools. Although there is no official standards body regulating pronunciation, there is a long-standing de facto standard pronunciation (Bühnendeutsch), most commonly used in formal speech and teaching materials; it is similar to the formal German spoken in and around Hanover. Adherence to those standards by private individuals and companies, including the print and audio-visual media, is voluntary. Austrian German has had standard pronunciation exceptions since 1904 (Luick's österreichische Bühnenaussprache). In Switzerland, no such official pronunciation codex exists, yet most Swiss Standard German speakers are markedly different sounding from Hanover-type phonetic targets.

Swiss French (French: français de Suisse or suisse romand) is the variety of French spoken in the French-speaking area of Switzerland known as Romandy. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, the others being German, Italian, and Romansch. In 2020 around 2 million people, or 22.8% of the population, in Switzerland spoke French as their primary language, and 28% of the population used French most often at work.

The French spoken in Switzerland is very similar to that of France or Belgium. The differences between the French of Switzerland and of France are most noticeably lexical, influenced by local substrate languages. While substantial phonological differences exist, as the French of Switzerland preserves many distinctions lost elsewhere, the phonetic qualities are often quite close, such as with the existence of long vowels or the distinction between /ɛ̃/ and /œ̃/. This contrasts with the differences between Standard German and Swiss German, which are largely mutually unintelligible.

The canton of Uri (German: Kanton Uri [ˈuːri] ; Romansh: Chantun Uri; French: Canton d'Uri; Italian: Canton Uri) is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland and a founding member of the Swiss Confederation. It is located in Central Switzerland. The canton's territory covers the valley of the Reuss between the St. Gotthard Pass and Lake Lucerne.

The official language of Uri is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German, but the main spoken dialect is the Alemannic Swiss German called Urner German [de].

In German orthography, the letter ß, called Eszett (IPA: [ɛsˈtsɛt], S-Z) or scharfes S (IPA: [ˌʃaʁfəs ˈʔɛs], "sharp S"), represents the /s/ phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs. The letter-name Eszett combines the names of the letters of ⟨s⟩ (Es) and ⟨z⟩ (Zett) in German. The character's Unicode names in English are double s, sharp s and eszett. The Eszett letter is currently used only in German, and can be typographically replaced with the double-s digraph ⟨ss⟩ if the ß-character is unavailable. In the 20th century, the ß-character was replaced with ss in the spelling of Swiss Standard German (Switzerland and Liechtenstein), while remaining Standard German spelling in other varieties of the German language.

The letter originated as the ⟨sz⟩ digraph used in late medieval and early modern German orthography, represented as a ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ (long s) and ⟨ʒ⟩ (tailed z) in blackletter typefaces, yielding ⟨ſʒ⟩. This developed from an earlier usage of ⟨z⟩ in Old and Middle High German to represent a sibilant that did not sound the same as ⟨s⟩; when the difference between the two sounds was lost in the 13th century, the two symbols came to be combined as ⟨sz⟩ in some situations.

Baden (German pronunciation: [ˈbaːdn̩] , "baths"), sometimes unofficially, to distinguish it from other Badens, called Baden bei Zürich ("Baden near Zürich") or Baden im Aargau ("Baden in the Aargau"), is a town and a municipality in Switzerland. It is the main town or seat of the district of Baden in the canton of Aargau. Located 25km northwest of Zürich in the Limmat Valley (German: Limmattal) mainly on the western side of the river Limmat, its mineral hot springs have been famed since at least the Roman era. Its official language is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German, but the main spoken language is the local Alemannic Swiss-German dialect. As of 2018 the town had a population of over 19,000.