Europe is the home of the idea that people who see themselves as a

nation should have a country. But very often those countries have seen 【M1】__________

themselves linguistically: France is the home of those who speak

French, and so on. This has always been a simplification. But one state,

one nation and one language remain a platonic ideal, which makes it all 【M2】__________

the odder that, at the heart of Europe, one nation in one state is one of

the most happily, successfully multilingual place on Earth. Switzerland, 【M3】__________

which has a population comparative in size to Hungary’s or Austria’s, has 【M4】__________

four official languages, and a huge amount of local varieties beyond that.

About 60% of Swiss speak German as their mother tongue; but if

you study the language of Goethe in Hamburg or Hanover, good luck

understand a conversation among Swiss. The local “Schwyzerdiitsch” is 【M5】__________

so far from the standard that children who speak have to learn High 【M6】__________

German in school.

Just over 20% of Swiss speak French, the next-biggest language.

Then there is Italian, spoken by only about 8% of the population, and,

most remarkably, Romansh, Romance language that is the native 【M7】_________

tongue of only around 0.5% of Swiss. Yet all three, excluding German, 【M8】__________

are official languages in the country. The Italian spoken is often a local

variety, and even tiny Romansh has widely diverging dialects. One

Romansh-speaker says that, when he was in the army, it was easy for 【M9】__________

him to use German with Romansh-speaking comrades than that was 【M10】_________

notionally their common language.

【M6】