[palata]

I don't know about Scottish-English and Irish-English, to be honest. Would an English native understand them?

Germans don't understand Swiss-German, and Swiss-Germans don't consider German as their mother tongue. Whereas the French being spoken on the French part of Switzerland is slightly different from the French from France, but people still consider that French is their mother tongue.

Not sure if that answers your question, or if you were just complaining about the fact that I made a difference between German and Swiss-German :-).

[walthamstow]

> Would an English native understand them?

Depends where in Scotland and how much they've had to drink.

On a serious note, words like ken, bairn, breekies, stramash are not that well understood by English people. But it's unlikely a Scot would use them when talking to an Englishman.

[palata]

Right. But is it then that a Scot would just not use some local words, but still speak in their language?

That's different with Swiss-German. If a Swiss-German person talks to you in German, then they are not talking in their language.

[benj111]

Depends where in England.

Bairn is northern English too.

[Glawen]

I learnt German in Germany, and I understand the Swiss. When you are waiting 4h to cross the gottard tunnel, you have plenty of time to listen to the radio. It is hard to understand just like any dialect when you are not used to it, but I would not call it a different language.

It is very unlike a French hearing Italian even though it is the same Latin root and words look the same on paper, grammatically it is very different.

[palata]

> and I understand the Swiss

Apparently not enough to learn that nobody in Switzerland would ever call that "the Swiss"? There is not even "one Swiss-German".

> grammatically it is very different.

In your 4h in the Gotthard tunnel, did you get to see how Swiss-German is written differently than German? Also the grammar is fairly different.

But yeah those are dialects, nobody said they weren't. I just said "they don't speak German, but Swiss-German" (more as a "fun fact" than trying to be pedantic), and they would definitely correct you if you said it is the same. Whereas a Suisse Romand (the French speaking Swiss) will tell you that they speak French, just like a French-Canadian from Quebec.