Last weekend Geoff and I went to Zurigo, Svizzera (Zurich, in Switzerland), for my cousin Francesca’s 50th birthday. Francesca, whose parents are both Italian, grew up in Switzerland, where her father used to work for the Italian Embassy in Zurich. She married a Swiss lawyer, and has two teenage children. Bilingual in Italian and Swiss German, Francesca is a professional translator and interpreter. She’s also fluent in English and French, and knows some Cantonese, but her specialisation is Swiss German Sign Language!

Visiting Francesca is always interesting from a linguistic point of view, especially when her children Oliver and Michelle are around as the conversations tend to move from English to Italian, to German, often all in one sentence … and Geoff and I can only participate in the English and Italian bits as neither of us speak German!  However, Saturday evening at her birthday’s party was particularly interesting: I’d liken it to being in the Babel’s tower. The 25 or so guests chatted together in German (naturally), in Italian, in English, in Spanish, and even in Sign Language!

Francesca on her throne

Due to the very variable weather, one day it’s cold and rainy and the next is sunny and hot, and the stress of organising the party and making sure that everybody and everything was OK, Francesca, the star of the event, lost her voice. So when it was time to blow out the candles on her birthday cake and open the presents my resourceful cousin and her friends organised a chain translation system: Francesca, sitting on the ‘throne’ which her friends had specially created for ‘the queen of the party’, spoke to the guests using Sign Language. This was translated into German by her work colleague Monica, and then translated into Italian by her friend Guia for those, like us, who didn’t understand German!

Bellinzona: the impressive remains of several defensive castles are visible from the road

Guia is a Swiss citizen, but her mother tongue is Italian because she was born in Canton Ticino, the southernmost Canton of the Swiss Confederation. Canton Ticino was Italian until the 16th century, when it was annexed to Switzerland, but even today the official language is still Italian. Its capital town is Bellinzona, which sounds like it should mean “beautiful area”, but according to local folk etymology the name actually means “war zone”, from the Latin bellum meaning ‘war’. Bellinzona is in fact situated at the convergence of several main routes which cross the Alps and then lead down into Italy. Amongst these are  il passo del San Gottardo (the St. Gotthard pass), and il passo del San Bernardino (the San Bernardino pass, which is our favourite route). Due to its strategic importance this area was subject to regular invasions from both the north and the south, and the impressive remains of several defensive castles are visible from the road.

Il Castello di Mesocco, we pass through this evocative landscape on our way up to il passo del San Bernardino

Another peculiarity of the Canton Ticino is the fact that it encloses a small portion of Italy called Campione d’Italia. Campione d’Italia is situated on the right side of lake Lugano, and is completely surrounded by Swiss territory. In terms of geografia politica (political geography) this little portion is designated una exclave (an exclave) from the Italian point of view, and una enclave (an enclave) from the Swiss point of view.

Italian is also spoken in il Cantone dei  Grigioni (the Graubünden canton), together with German and Romansh. When we drive from Italy into Switzerland and cross the border at Chiasso (literally: Noise) into the Swiss Canton Ticino, the first thing we notice is that although we’re in Switzerland nothing seems to change. All the road signs, shop and factory names, and so on, are still in Italian. However, as soon as we emerge from the 6.5 kilometre long tunnel which takes us through the mountain ridge under  il passo del San Bernardino in il Cantone dei  Grigioni, we find that the Italian Uscita (Exit) signs along the autostrada are replaced by German Ausfahrt (Exit) signs, and we realise that finally, linguistically speaking, we are really in Switzerland.

What a fascinating and varied world we live in!