Via Maproom comes this interactive map of the Swiss elections from several weeks ago.
Switzerland is a tapestry of languages and heritages, and its politics is equally mixed—the Swiss People’s Party came out ahead with 29% of the vote, followed by the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland with 19.5%, the Free Democratic Party of Switzerland with 15.6% and the Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland taking 14.6%.
It’s fun to also compare and contrast with this ethnolinguistic map of Switzerland, which is somewhat dated but relevant nonetheless (previously posted here).
Fun fact: Romantsch is the least spoken of Switzerland’s four national languages, descended from Latin, and now only spoken by 60,000 residents, 0.9% of Switzerland’s 7.5 million inhabitants. By comparison, the most-used non-official language is Serbo-Croatian, used by some 100,000+ speakers (all figures as of the 2000 census).
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Comments to this entry
Adrian
November 8, 2007
4:24 am
That's Romansch for "hello" - the only word I know, I only remember it because it's my sister's name. I remember seeing it in the train station in Zurich when I was 8 and wondering why the train station said hello to my sister three times ("Guten Tag, Bonjour, Ciao, Allegra!").
Curzon
November 8, 2007
6:03 am
Imprisoned NY mob boss Johnny Sacrimonie's daughter Allegra is getting married. At the ceremony the priest says, "Do you, Allegra, take this..."
Cut to the audience. Christopher wonders outloud: "Isn't that a cold medicine?"
Paulie whispers: "It means 'happiness' in Italian."
Christopher: "What the fuck's that got to do with cold medicine?"