Swiss German

Made for the way Switzerland speaks

Swiss German is not one language with one spelling. It is a family of dialects that change from valley to valley. The API is built around that, and around French and Italian in Switzerland as well.

Swiss varieties in the catalogue

VarietyCodeStatus
Swiss German, supra-regionalde-CH (standard)hand-tuned
Zürich German (Züritüütsch)de-CH-zurichhand-tuned
Bernese German (Bärndütsch)de-CH-bernhand-tuned
Basel German (Baaseldütsch)de-CH-baselhand-tuned
Lucerne German (Lozärnerdütsch)de-CH-luzernhand-tuned
Swiss French (Romandie)fr-CHhand-tuned
Swiss High Germande-CH-hochdeutschbest effort
Swiss Italian (Ticino)it-CHbest effort

14 further Swiss German regions

St. Gallen, Thurgau, Schaffhausen, Appenzell, Glarus, Graubünden, Aargau, Solothurn, Bernese Oberland, Fribourg, Valais, Zug, Schwyz and Uri. Rendered on a best-effort basis: listen before you use one in production.

Accents of the Romandie

Swiss French with the accent of Geneva, Vaud, Valais, Neuchâtel, Fribourg or the Jura.

What the status means. Hand-tuned varieties are the ones we run and measure in production. Best-effort varieties are accepted and rendered, but we publish no quality claim for them. The live list is always available from the API.

And when your callers speak dialect

Recognition understands Swiss German from every region and writes it as Standard German text. It also recognises Swiss High German, French, Italian and English, and it can detect which one is spoken.

Speech-to-Text →

Numbers the Swiss way

A phone number read in Bernese sounds different from one read in Zürich German. The API reads digits and phone numbers per dialect, in the familiar 3-3-2-2 grouping.

"language": "de-CH-bern"
<speak>
  Mir rüefed Sie zrugg uf
  <say-as interpret-as="telephone">+41 31 533 22 02</say-as>.
</speak>

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