| Switzerland
(German: die Schweiz, French: Suisse, Italian: Svizzera, Romansh: Svizra),
officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked alpine country in
Central Europe. This small multilingual country, of a little over 7
million people, has four national languages, German, French, Italian,
and Romansch; however, the first of these, German, is only written or
used for formal situations, and several variants and dialects are spoken
commonly, and collectively are named as "Swiss German". It is bordered
by Germany, France, Italy, and Austria & Liechtenstein. It dates its
independence to 1291; historically it was a confederation, and it has
been a federation since 1848, with a current division into 26 cantons or
"counties/states". |
