COPY LINK

For members

CULTURE

Could Switzerland ever become a country with just one language?

The novel idea that Switzerland could one day have just one national language is explored in a new Swiss movie — with shocking, but very funny, consequences.

Published: 14 December 2023 13:52 CET

Could Switzerland ever become a country with just one language?

Could this be new reality in Switzerland? Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Call it a film of horror or fantasy— and, depending on which side of the linguistic divide you live, you may be right.

The new movie, called “Bon Schuur Ticino” has just opened several days ago but is already a huge hit.

Blame it on democracy

The film’s premise is this:

A referendum to choose just one national language, instead of the current four, plunges the country into a state of emergency, when French becomes the only official language.

That is, only the Swiss-German and Italian parts are in a state of emergency — French speakers are quite happy about the new rule.

The plot centres around a 56-year-old Swiss German, who doesn’t speak a word of French.

Since he works for federal police, he is sent to Ticino to disarm a resistance group of Italian speakers, which is fighting against the new law.

This is the film’s trailer:

Wait, could this actually happen in real life?

The movie’s two premises — multilinguism and referendums — are the backbone of Switzerland’s culture and democracy.

That much is based on facts.

To date, nobody in Switzerland has seriously suggested to eliminate three national languages, leaving just one.

But what if a group of disgruntled citizens collected enough signatures on a petition to bring this issue to a national vote?

Theoretically, it is possible.

In reality, however, the federal chancellery has to verify and approve all popular initiatives to ensure that no trivial or bizarre proposals end up being voted on.

For instance, years ago, a group of people who clearly had nothing better to do with their time, launched a proposal entitled “Let’s raze the Alps so we can see the ocean.”

It goes without saying that this proposal got nowhere near the ballot box.

Now, let’s assume that the language issue would get some traction and it would actually end up being voted on.

There is no way that the Swiss German majority would vote to adapt French as the country’s main language. And Italian speakers would not be thrilled about this either.

The six francophone cantons (Geneva, Vaud, Valais, Fribourg, Neuchâtel, and Jura) would not have enough sway against the 20 other cantons to claim victory at the polls.

So in this case at least, fiction and reality will not merge.

You can reasonably expect Switzerland’s linguistic landscape to remain the same.

If you are interested in watching this movie, it opened in the German and Italian – speaking parts of the country on December 8th.

It will be shown in the French-speaking areas from February under the title “Ciao Ciao Bourbine.”

How are movie-goers reacting to this film’s premise?

As one social media user summed it up, “It would be an absolute horror for all German-speaking Swiss.”

“From now on, all Swiss comedies should be made in French only,” another said.

Perhaps the most telling comment, however, came from the Foreign Affairs Minister Ignazio Cassis, who attended the film’s premiere.

“If there were only one language left in Switzerland, it would of course be the only truly Swiss one: Romansh!”

Member comments

Become a Member to leave a comment.

Entitled “Colonial: Switzerland’s Global Entanglements”, the exhibition presents objects and artefacts that bear witness to the landlocked country’s participation alongside the seafaring major European colonial powers.

It includes 18th-century cotton cloth used by Swiss traders as currency to buy enslaved people, sacks for loading goods such as cotton and cocoa onto ships, and a uniform jacket from a Swiss mercenary regiment which served the Dutch East India Company before switching to the British crown.

The regiment fought with the British alongside the future Duke of Wellington in the 1799 Siege of Seringapatam in India that overthrew Tipu Sultan of Mysore.

The exhibition also includes a collection of butterflies assembled by a wealthy merchant involved in a coffee plantation in Cuba cultivated by slaves, and the cap and whip of a Swiss national recruited as a civil servant in the Congo Free State in the early 20th century.

Understanding the debate

“It’s a difficult subject,” the Swiss National Museum’s director Denise Tonella told AFP.

“It’s not easy to tackle an unflattering topic,” but “it’s an important issue for today’s society,” she added.

“Since the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a lot of debate about colonialism and Switzerland,” Tonella said, with the exhibition aimed at providing the means to understand the issues.

In the wake of protests in the United States in 2020 following the death of George Floyd, and the tearing down of a statue of a slave trader in the British city of Bristol, the Swiss city of Neuchatel was shaken by a controversy surrounding its statue of David de Pury, an 18th-century banker and merchant.

A major benefactor of his hometown in northwestern Switzerland, his statue was sprayed with red paint in 2020 and a group questioning his connections to the slave trade launched a petition to have it removed.

A compromise was reached, with the local authorities opting for an explanatory plaque and the installation alongside it of a critical artwork representing the statue upside down, with its head buried in the base.

Theories justifying colonialism

“Different periods elicit different perspectives on history,” professor Georg Kreis wrote in the exhibition catalogue, explaining that these issues had long “been repressed” at the academic level.

Since it had no colonies, Switzerland perceived itself “outside the wider European history, occupying a special status” as an “innocent country”, the historian recalled.

“After the turn of the millennium, however, Switzerland’s focus on its colonial past took a different turn,” with academic study increasing over the past 20 years.

Drawing on this research, the museum set out to reflect on all facets of Swiss involvement, starting with the trade in raw materials and the transatlantic slave trade that saw merchants and plantation owners rack up immense fortunes in the 18th century.

The exhibition also shows how Swiss mercenaries were recruited to suppress uprisings in colonial possessions, and later how geologists took part in oil exploration.

It also sheds light on the Swiss naturalists and anthropologists behind racial theories used to justify colonialism.

The exhibition recalls how in the early 20th century, the universities of Geneva and Zurich were renowned for their work in racial anthropology, where researchers measured skulls to hierarchise populations.

The exhibition, which opened on Friday, runs until January 9th