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Are Swiss Germans considered to be ethnically German?

A

apie3000

Regular Member
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Ethnic group
Ulster Scots, English, German, Swiss German, Probably Gaelic Irish
Y-DNA haplogroup
R-L21
mtDNA haplogroup
T1a1
Or are they an ethnic group unto them self? If it is the second one than please tell me what linguistic, religious, and cultural differences warrant such a division.
 
As far as I know, Swiss German is a language. Swiss people are Swiss and not Germans. They descent mostly from a Germanic Alemann tribe. Austrians are not Germans too.
 
don_joe said:
As far as I know, Swiss German is a language. Swiss people are Swiss and not Germans. They descent mostly from a Germanic Alemann tribe. Austrians are not Germans too.
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Depends what you count as German.. Ethnically and culturally they are indeed German.. As are Austrians, same way as both Bavarians and Hessians are German, same way Pennsylvania Dutch are German
 
John Doe said:
Depends what you count as German.. Ethnically and culturally they are indeed German.. As are Austrians, same way as both Bavarians and Hessians are German, same way Pennsylvania Dutch are German
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Ask any Swiss if they are German. [emoji4] Hey, nice nick, I thought first that I have replied myself. [emoji4]
 
Quoting Pratt:

Pratt said:
Genetically, if they are really Swiss Germans and not some recent German migration to Switzerland, Swiss Germans are somewhat closer to Swiss Italians rather than to Danes, and Swiss Germans do share more cultural traits (Alpine culture, Swiss history and national identity) with Swiss Italians rather than with Danes. Linguistically and ethnographically Swiss Germans are Germanic just as Danes, but quite in the opposite side of the Germanic world.


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don_joe said:
Ask any Swiss if they are German. [emoji4] Hey, nice nick, I thought first that I have replied myself. [emoji4]
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Yeah, ask any Swiss or any Austrian TODAY. Clearly, after 70 years of telling people they aren't something, they'll actually begin believing it and adapting to the situation.. Maybe this is less relevant for the Swiss Germans but this is exactly the case of today's Austrians..
 
They distinguish themselves clearly from Germans. Language, identity, culture. I have to do professionally with both and there's a clear difference. If I remember correctly, Dietrich Schwanitz wrote in one of his books that Germans and Swiss have a complex versus each other. The Swiss have a problem that Germans are better in their mother tongue than they are. And Germans have a problem with the fact that Swiss are more Germans (working ethics) than they are.
 
John Doe said:
Yeah, ask any Swiss or any Austrian TODAY. Clearly, after 70 years of telling people they aren't something, they'll actually begin believing it and adapting to the situation.. Maybe this is less relevant for the Swiss Germans but this is exactly the case of today's Austrians..
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They have their own history and a legend about origin of their land witch dates from 13th century. It's not the last 70 years...You can talk about continuity of German language from the North to the South but than you can pack even Holland together with Germans. Identity is something else, history too. CH was never a part of Germany. You just have to respect that.
 
I think they're somewhat distinct from Germans proper, particularly in terms of language. Swiss German is very different from Standard German (and I believe they are mutually unintelligible).
 
Falco said:
I think they're somewhat distinct from Germans proper, particularly in terms of language. Swiss German is very different from Standard German (and I believe they are mutually unintelligible).
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Swiss understand German well, since they learn it in school. Germans need though some time to understand Swiss dialects. High German is official language in Switzerland but they speak dialects among each other and those are quite different Alemannic dialects. They miss for example accusative which is present in standard German. A lot of words sound completely differerent, like "gewesen" in DE (it was) vs. "gsi".
 
John Doe said:
Depends what you count as German.. Ethnically and culturally they are indeed German.. As are Austrians, same way as both Bavarians and Hessians are German, same way Pennsylvania Dutch are German
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I was basically asking in terms of ethnicity and culture. My curiosity on this subject was sparked when I looked at my own ancestry. Orangeburg, South Carolina where much of my family is from was founded by German and Swiss German colonists as part of a colonization scheme by the Lowcountry to settle the upper part of the state with protestants as a buffer against Native American tribes which almost destroyed the colony in the Yamasee war. Anyways the Germans and the Swiss Germans both settled the county and basically became one people who kept their ethnic distinctiveness for quite a while before being assimilated by the greater southern culture. The Germans were mostly from Baden Wurttemberg and spoke an Allemannic dialect very similar to the Swiss.
 
apie3000 said:
I was basically asking in terms of ethnicity and culture. My curiosity on this subject was sparked when I looked at my own ancestry. Orangeburg, South Carolina where much of my family is from was founded by German and Swiss German colonists as part of a colonization scheme by the Lowcountry to settle the upper part of the state with protestants as a buffer against Native American tribes which almost destroyed the colony in the Yamasee war. Anyways the Germans and the Swiss Germans both settled the county and basically became one people who kept their ethnic distinctiveness for quite a while before being assimilated by the greater southern culture. The Germans were mostly from Baden Wurttemberg and spoke an Allemannic dialect very similar to the Swiss.
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Interesting family history. I live on the Swiss side near the border with Baden-Württemberg where we occasionally go shopping. Despite some similarities between those two dialects, you can tell which one is German one. The pronounciation over the border is closer and it's generally closer to standard German. But they perfectly understand the Swiss.
 
I like the original question. How are Swiss genetic communities distinct from other German communities? For instance are Germans from Alsace more closely related (Allemmanic language) than other communities? I am looking at family dna stories from Alsace (G2a), Westphalia (I1-Z59), Netherlands (R1b) and Balkans maybe (I1-Z138) and a Southern France (E-V13) that we have in an Alpine group (more snaps pending). I find the exploration interesting and thought this was a good question. I’d never heard of the low country migration. That’s interesting.


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I only saw the post I responded to then saw the rest. I think my question is covered there.


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lreisdorph said:
I’d never heard of the low country migration. That’s interesting.
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This is a link to the Orangeburg German-Swiss Genealogical Society which gives some information regarding this migration. https://ogsgs.org/rabies.htm Here are some other links for further study, on the religion of the Orangeburg German Swiss https://ogsgs.org/EarlyOrangeburghChurch.pdf a short synopsis of Orangeburg German settlement http://www.carolana.com/SC/Towns/Orangeburg_SC.html a huge amount of text about the history of the county and the settlers https://archive.org/stream/historyoforangeb00sall/historyoforangeb00sall_djvu.txt and something from rootsweb which is currently down but has to come up sometime http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~scorange/history/lutheran3.htm
 
I don't think Swiss Germans consider themselves German, but rather Germanic.
 
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