[anakaine]

They need not be proficient to understand that Swiss German is distinctly different from German. Its reasonably common knowledge.

Swiss German is based around Alemannic dialects rendering it often and frequently unintelligible to traditional German speakers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German

[Glawen]

It is a dialect, written form is German. It is like hearing French spoken in sub Saharan Africa, it is hard to grasp but eventually you get it

[lapinot]

> It is a dialect, written form is German.

Both things are wrong. It's not a dialect in the sense that it is not the same language with special intonation, some new words and new idiomatic sentences. It has its own (much simpler) conjugation and declension scheme. Much closer in feel to a creole.

Its written form is also not german. Good luck reading some of the züri by mike comic strips as a german reader.

[palata]

> it is hard to grasp but eventually you get it

If by "eventually you get it" you mean "after putting enough effort into learning it", then yes. But that's the same for every language.

If you mean "you need a few hours to get used to it and then you understand almost everything", then... well... not at all.

[bombolo]

French and Sicilian are dialects of Latin. Do you think French people can travel to Sicily and start chatting?

[benj111]

On the other hand my gf is from Mallorca and they have their own language distinct from Spanish. And she understands more french than me because it's closely related. Not enough to have a conversation though.