Dialect Fewer different Swiss German words for grasshoppers

Heustöffel, Mattehüpfer and Heujucker: the variety of Swiss-German words for grasshoppers has decreased. "Heugümper" has replaced other terms in many dialects.

This is shown by a new map from a dialect research project published by the University of Bern on Platform X on Monday.

Around 70 years ago, locusts were sometimes called "Heustuffel" in the canton of Obwalden, "Heujucker" in the canton of St. Gallen and "Mattegumper" in parts of the cantons of Basel-Landschaft and Solothurn.

According to a new survey of people born between 1985 and 2002, the little animals are called "Heugümper" in almost the whole of German-speaking Switzerland.

The research team at the Institute of German Studies and the Center for the Study of Language and Society (CSLS) at the University of Bern collected and evaluated language data from 1016 people from 127 locations between February 2020 and December 2023.

The data will be published in a dialect atlas in November.