FRONTIÈRES, BORDERS, GRENZEN, FRONTIERE, FRONTERAS

We live in a land of immigrants.
Switzerland is a tiny country with 7 million inhabitants. We communicate in French, German, Italian and Romansch. In order to understand one another, we sometimes resort to English. And when we want to READ, LIRE, LER, LESEN, OKUMAK, LEGGERE, we go to the library in Lausanne where there are14,000 books in 180 different languages.

My father is Swiss; my mother is English. One of my brothers married a French woman; another married a Belgian. My sister adopted a son from Portugal and a daughter from Crete. This daughter married an Italian and they adopted Clea, a child from Vietnam. Another brother adopted two Peruvian children. Our family alone includes nine different nationalities. And our friends are Quebecois, Malian, Moroccan, American, English, Albanian and Lebanese.

So where are the borders?

Johanne Blanchet
Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Neuchâtel, Suisse


RETURN TO : Cultural intermixing


CLOSE WINDOW