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That's interesting that the Swiss French dialect is more comprehensble to "French" French speakers. I studied 4 years of German in college and once one of my professors played the class a tape of people speaking in Swiss-German dialect and asked us to translate it. Everybody was completely lost. When I go to visit my Mom's family I do fine as long they speak high German, but they always eventually lapse into Entlebucher, and I can't follow a thing. I talked with a linguist who wanted to record my mother speaking in her Entlebucher dialect. He said that since my Mom left Switzerland in 1935 before the era of modern communications really got started, that her dialect is very pure compared to that now spoken in German speaking Switzerland. My uncle speaks excellent German and French, but he only studied a little English. Sometimes when my German gave out on me, we would end up communicating in Latin of all things because we had both studied that language in school!
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