Ist Schweizerhochdeutsch auch Hochdeutsch? Im Prinzip ja...

Abstract

A pluricentric model of standard languages takes into account that, due to political and historical circumstances, these languages usually develop specific varieties when they have the status of national or official languages. Within a pluricentric model, variants, making up around 5% of all lexical items, are not considered as substandard or dialect, but as lexical characteristics of the use of the standard language in different nations or regions. These characteristics are well documented in written and formal spoken language. The fact that these variants are part of everyday language is a good reason to take them into account in language teaching. In the case of German, there is empirical evidence for the use of variants in public discourse, but many speakers remain sceptical of the validity of variants of Standard German, especially in the case of so called helveticisms. This article recommends to discuss this in language classes, making use of resources like dictionaries (e.g. Ammon et al., 2016) or didactic suggestions (e.g. Hägi, 2015).