People filling in our questionnaire gave the following languages as their mother tongues:
| Participants | % | |
|---|---|---|
| Swiss German | 909 | 69 |
| French | 257 | 20 |
| High German | 165 | 13 |
| Italian | 107 | 8 |
| Romansh | 64 | 5 |
| Other | 129 | 10 |
Percentages were calculated with 1316 participants as a basis for 100%. The total thus comes to more than 100%, because several people declared having more than one mother tongues. More precisely, 176 people selected two mother tongues and 27 chose three of them.
However, it has to be considered that we did not only ask for languages in a linguistic sense, but also for varieties, because German and German Dialect were two distinct options. Thus, the percentage of multilingual participants has to be taken into account with a pinch of salt. In fact, only 4 out of the 26 trilingual participants actually mentioned three different languages (German Dialect/Italian/Spanish and German Dialect/French/Dutch and German Dialect/French/Portuguese and High German/French/Spanish ), all others selected two different varieties of German as well as another language as mothergongues.
One person mentioned signing as a mother tongue.
During the second collection, an additional language was offered as an option. Out of the 98 people who did fill in the questionnaire in this collection, 16 mentioned the Italian dialect as their mother tongue.