When one grows up surrounded by relatives speaking their native (non-English) language, the tendency is to pick up at least a few words and phrases that become a part of one's own vocabulary. In the case of my husband and me, that language is Swiss.

Don't bother trying to tell me there is no Swiss language because having come from a long, long line of Swiss-speaking relatives, that simply won't fly. It is not German. It is Swiss.

So this morning, my husband and I passed my cousin in the parking lot near my office. He yelled "Vie gehts" at her. She grinned and responded with something equally Swiss-ish. Laughter ensued and suddenly we were transported back to an earlier era.

My cousins and I grew up listening to our Grandma Suter and her sisters talking in a strange mix of English and Swiss. We always knew when they were talking about us because interspersed with the "achs" and other Swiss words were very familiar names..."Mary...Claire...Cathy". This was usually when we'd spent the night with her on the farm and they were in their Saturday morning phone fests.

My mother didn't raise her voice at us often, but we knew what she meant when she said (this is spelled phonetically because I don't know the true spelling and this is what we heard): "Sheeshta-veedle-ee-goochs." (That "ch" is tricky -- it's not ch as in chat but more of a guttural as if one was saying "ach". ) At any rate, we knew this meant that we should get our fingers out of whatever we were doing because whatever it was wasn't for us. As in snitching cookies that were meant for company.

Continue reading this column at: http://steinermp.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/vie-gehts/