I enjoyed a two week stay in Zurich airport courtesy of Swiss taxpayers. We were residing in the international section. Every morning at six, we had an opportunity to have a bit of fresh air. My fellow fugees,
having more than enjoyed the great outdoors, were not inclined to join the outings.
The fresh air was served with a helping of airline advertising. As I stretched and surveyed the jumbo jets arranged in order, We often verbalised Our thoughts to Our handlers. There was one particular tasty crumpet who found US about as amusing as being locked in a cage of non-human schizophrenic psychopaths with protruding wires.
She told me something which I found fascinating
and have raised repeatedly whenever the opportunity arose.
The Swiss are, arguably, the country bumpkins of Europe. Swiss German amongst Hoch Deutsche speakers is appreciated almost as much as Appalachia's finest moonshiner waxing poetic at the Yale Club in Manhattan.
We know because we've tried to bum a cigarette at that Yale Club.
I digress. Constantly. She, the security personnel escorting me to watch all the pretty airplanes, explained that if the cleverest Swiss person raised in rural, mountainous Switzerland is speaking German to the dumbest person in Berne, the rural accent will cause the speakers to pigeonhole themselves and others.
One advantage of making Japanese the next lingua franca is that not only will learners be edified by the difficulty of the language, they will also link themselves to the past because each ideograph contains an ancestral development that nicely compartmentalises a small portion of linguistic history.
