The Swiss words in the Italian

Pronunciation is the easy half of Italian. What stays hard is grammar that English left behind long ago: every noun is masculine or feminine, every adjective agrees with it, and verbs change for each person. Il treno, the train, but la stazione, the station; un caffè caldo, a hot coffee, but una cioccolata calda, a hot chocolate. Nobody will correct you, but getting the endings right is what turns your Italian from understandable into pleasant to listen to.

Swiss Italian has its own official vocabulary. Because the country's laws, forms and timetables are written in three languages side by side, Italian here has borrowed words and turns of phrase that Italy does not use. A driving licence is a licenza di condurre, not a patente. Health insurance is the cassa malati. A mobile phone is still often a natel. The yellow post buses that reach every valley are autopostali, and the card that halves most train fares is the abbonamento metà-prezzo. Add the shop and restaurant words on the sound cards above, and you have most of the Swiss Italian a visitor meets.

Learn three small question words. Quanto costa? is how much is it?, dov'è? is where is it?, and a che ora? is at what time? With those and a place name, you can manage most of a day. When you do not understand the answer, può ripetere, per favore?, can you repeat that, please?, works better than switching languages, because Ticinesi are generally happy to say it again slowly.

The dialect is not a different accent; it is a different language. In the valleys, many older people, and plenty of younger ones among family, speak Ticinese, a Lombard dialect closer to the speech of Como and Milan than to standard Italian. It has its own vocabulary and sounds, and even Italians from the south of Italy find it hard. You will hear it in grottos, at village festivals and between the players at a bocce court. Nobody expects you to speak it, but recognising it, and asking what a word means, is a good way to start a conversation.

Numbers and money. Prices are in francs, said in Italian: tre franchi e cinquanta, three francs fifty, or simply tre e cinquanta. The decimal comma used in Italy is often a point here, as in the rest of Switzerland, so a price tag reads 3.50. Coffee prices, unlike the language, are Swiss: an espresso at the bar often costs three francs or more, two or three times what it would cost an hour south.

Italian south of the Gotthard

The Italian you will hear in Lugano and Bellinzona is the Italian of school and television, with the softer, flatter tune of Lombardy across the border. If you have learned any Italian at all, you will understand it; if you have not, it is one of the kindest languages to start with, because it is spelled exactly as it sounds. Once you know the handful of rules on these cards, you can read a train announcement, a menu or a street sign aloud and be understood.

What to practise first. Learn to hear where the stress falls, because Ticinese place names follow the ordinary rule and land on the second-to-last syllable: Lu-GA-no, Lo-CAR-no, A-SCO-na. Then learn the greetings and say them out loud before you arrive: buongiorno, buonasera from mid-afternoon onwards, grazie in three clear syllables. The double consonants are leaned on more lightly here than in Rome or Florence, so hold the tt in grotto without forcing it; your vowels, open and pure, matter even more.

Six things that catch visitors out

Coffee after the meal, never with it. Coffee comes at the end of lunch or dinner, after the dessert, not alongside the food. A cappuccino or any milky coffee is a breakfast drink; ordering one after a big lunch will be served without comment, but marks you as a tourist. At the end of a meal at a grotto, a small glass of grappa or nocino, walnut liqueur, is often offered.

Lunch is at noon, and the kitchen closes. In the Ticino, lunch is served from about noon until two, and dinner from about seven. Between those times, many restaurants serve nothing hot, and in the valleys a grotto may close its kitchen early if it is quiet. Arriving at three expecting a meal often means a plate of cheese and salami at best.

Carnival comes with free risotto. In February and March, towns across the Ticino hold carnival, and the biggest, Rabadan in Bellinzona, fills the old town for days. A carnival tradition is the risottata: huge copper pots of risotto with luganighe, the local sausage, cooked in the square and served to everyone. Join the queue with a plate and say grazie; it is part of the party.

Dress for the town, not the beach. Lugano and Locarno are elegant, and in restaurants, churches and shops, swimwear and bare chests are out of place. Cover your shoulders and knees in churches. On the lakeside paths and at the lidos, the public lakeside bathing areas, anything goes.

Bocce is a serious game. In many villages and grottos you will find a campo da bocce, a long sand court where players roll heavy balls towards a small target ball. It is a game for all ages and often fiercely competitive. Watching is welcome; walking across the court during a game is not, and if you are invited to play, ask how the scoring works before your first throw.

The border is close, and it is a real border. Lugano is about half an hour from Como, and many visitors cross into Italy for the day. Bring your passport or identity card, remember that the euro is used on the other side, and be aware that Switzerland is not in the European Union, so customs limits apply when bringing meat, cheese, wine and other goods back across the border.

Italian, but Swiss first

Italian is the main language of about one Swiss in twelve, almost all of them in the canton of Ticino and in four valleys of Graubünden that run south towards Italy: Mesolcina, Calanca, Bregaglia and Val Poschiavo. Together, these are known as the Svizzera italiana. It is a small region, but Italian is a full national language, and every train, every federal form and every banknote carries it.

The Ticinesi are Italian-speaking Swiss, not Italians living in Switzerland, and the distinction matters to them. They share the language, the food and much of the culture of Lombardy across the border, but they vote, pay taxes and organise their lives the Swiss way, and they are proud of both halves. Every working day tens of thousands of cross-border commuters, the frontalieri, drive in from Italy, and their impact on wages and traffic is a constant subject of local politics. Calling a Ticinese an Italian is rarely taken as a compliment.

English is spoken in hotels, at the lakeside in Lugano and Locarno, and by most younger people, but less widely than in Zurich or Geneva. German is common too, because many German-speaking Swiss holiday and retire here. In shops, cafés and grottos, and anywhere in the valleys, an attempt at Italian will be noticed and appreciated, and it usually earns a smile and a slower, friendlier answer.

Warmer than the north, more formal than it looks

Begin with Lei. In shops, offices, hotels and with anyone older, use Lei, the polite you, which takes the same verb form as he and she: Lei parla inglese?, do you speak English? Add a title: buongiorno signora, buonasera signore. In the Ticino, people are often quicker to become friendly than in German-speaking Switzerland, but the polite form stays until someone offers possiamo darci del tu, we can say tu.

Ciao is for friends, not for the cashier. Ciao means both hello and goodbye, but only between people who use tu. With strangers, buongiorno and buonasera are the greetings, and arrivederci or buona giornata the goodbyes. Salve sits in between, polite but not stiff, and is useful when you are not sure. On mountain paths, buongiorno or a simple salve to everyone you pass is expected.

Requests are softened, not shortened. Italian rarely gives a bare command. Mi dà un caffè, per favore?, will you give me a coffee, please?, or vorrei, I would like, is how you order. Permesso, with permission, is said as you pass someone in a narrow space or enter someone's home; scusi gets attention; prego means you're welcome, go ahead, please come in, and several other things, depending on the tone.

Conversation is part of the meal. Ticinesi enjoy talking at the table, and lunch at a grotto can last two hours. It is normal to be asked where you are from, how you like the region and what you have eaten, and the right answer is an enthusiastic one. Food is a serious subject: asking how a dish is made, or which grotto in the valley makes the best polenta, is the easiest way to be welcomed into a conversation.

From Lugano to the Bernina

The south of the Ticino, the Sottoceneri, centres on Lugano and its lake, with palm-lined promenades, steep villages like Gandria clinging to the shore and Monte Brè and Monte San Salvatore rising on either side. Further south, the Mendrisiotto is wine country, where much of the Ticino's merlot is grown, and Monte San Giorgio, above Lake Lugano, is a UNESCO World Heritage site for its fossils of marine reptiles about 240 million years old.

North of the Monte Ceneri pass lies the Sopraceneri. Bellinzona, the cantonal capital, is guarded by three medieval castles, Castelgrande, Montebello and Sasso Corbaro, which together are a World Heritage site. Locarno, on Lake Maggiore, holds an international film festival every August, with screenings in the open air of the Piazza Grande. Ascona, beside it, is the smaller, quieter resort town.

From Locarno, the valleys climb into the Alps: the Valle Maggia, with its stone villages; the Verzasca, famous for its clear green water and the double-arched Ponte dei Salti; and the Leventina, through which the road and railway climb towards the Gotthard. The Gotthard Base Tunnel, opened in 2016, runs 57 kilometres under the mountains and has made the trip from Zurich to Lugano about two hours. Many travellers still prefer the old mountain line for the views.

The Italian-speaking valleys of Graubünden lie further east. Val Poschiavo is crossed by the Bernina Express, which climbs from Tirano in Italy over the Bernina Pass and down into the Engadine; the railway is a World Heritage site. Val Bregaglia, near the Maloja Pass, is known for its chestnut woods and its granite peaks, and was the home of the Giacometti family of artists. In autumn, chestnuts are roasted and sold in the streets across the whole region, and many villages hold a festa della castagna.