[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.