| Summary: | Switzerland has an atypical language history. Its institutional and official multilingualism reaches as far back as the 19th century. However, before this period, regions and cantons applied a pragmatic, flexible and multifaceted multilingualism. Due to its situation at the crossroads of Europe, to internal and external mobility, individual multilingualism has always played a significant role, albeit in specific social conditions. In addition to national and official multilingualism, the country and its language communities have to manage other forms of multilingualism and other language contact situations: various diglossic situations, a Romance minority language – Rumantsch – which is scattered in five varieties, called idioms, and a contested koinè, Rumantsch Grischun, a significant number of immigration languages, and a strong presence of English. The Swiss political system, federalism and direct democracy with (very) strong cantonal and also municipal autonomy, complemented by the subtle interplay between the liberty of language, the principle of territoriality and the principle of personality is considered to represent the guarantee to maintain multilingualism and at the same time the three Romance minority languages, which vary in terms of numbers of speakers and status. Switzerland ratified the European Charter of regional or minority languages in 1997, and the Framework Convention for the protection of national minorities in 1998, although the terms regional language, minority language and minority do not quite cover the same meaning in Switzerland as in other officially multilingual countries.In this contribution, the historical, political, and demographic aspects of Swiss multilingualism, and linguistic cohabitation between the majority and the three Romance language communities are first presented. Then, the diversity inside the respective language areas and their effects on the other language groups are described, together with the relationship with the cultural and linguistic hinterland shaped by France, Germany and Italy compared to which the Swiss language groups feel somewhat peripheral. The texts discussed are part of the political and official (constitutions, federal and cantonal laws etc.), media (broadcast, articles, letters to the editor etc.) and individual discourse on multilingualism, languages and dialects. These documents are supplemented by documents written by students of the Language Center and the Section for plurilingualism and foreign language teaching of the bilingual University of Fribourg/Freiburg (texts posted in a blog on Swiss-German diglossia by students training to be teachers of German as a second language, language biographies, written papers) which deal with the topics of identity, attitudes, competence and belonging. Finally, the future language challenges and issues of a small country of eight million inhabitants with a considerable inter- and intralinguistic variety is sketched.
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