Where you need it
Not sorted by part of speech but by the moment: what is actually said on a shift, in the order it arrives.
The direction is the same as everywhere here — understanding first. Most of these lines are said to you; the few you would say yourself are marked.
Care and nursing homes
A resident with dementia loses her second languages first. What is left is the Zurich German of her childhood — and that is the language the shift runs in.
Every line here has been machine-checked for Zurich forms, but no native speaker has read them yet. We say so because you cannot tell by looking.
The handover
Colleague to colleague, nothing slowed down, nobody switching to Standard German on your account. The fastest speech of the day, and the part that decides the whole shift.
10 lines9 to understand
The morning
Short sentences said while both hands are busy. Standard German is not the neutral option here: switching language mid-care reads as a switch of person.
10 lines3 to understand
When something hurts
Pain does not speak a second language. Somebody reporting it is not composing — and somebody who misreads it takes pain for agitation.
10 lines5 to understand
Meals
The situation that comes round most often and that nobody prepares for, because it sounds like the easy one.
10 lines3 to understand
Restlessness in the evening
Somebody wants to go home, to a home that has not existed for forty years. What helps is short, in the present tense, and in the language the person is thinking in.
10 lines4 to understand
Visitors
Suddenly you are the institution. The daughter arriving on a Sunday afternoon judges the home by whether the person at the door could follow her.
10 lines3 to understand