Switzerland (German German (Deutsch, [ˈdɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Globally, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers: die Schweiz,^{[note 3]} French French is a Romance language globally spoken by about 110 million people as a first language (mother tongue), by 190 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant numbers of speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France, where the language: la Suisse, Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by another 10 million Italian descendants in the world, making it spoken by a total of 70 million native speakers. It is also spoken by an additional 125 million people as a foreign language. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four: la Svizzera, Romansh Romansh (also spelled Romansch, Rumantsh, or Romanche; Romansh: rumantsch/rumauntsch/romontsch; German: Rätoromanisch) is one of the four national languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian and French. It is one of the Rhaeto-Romance languages, believed to have descended from the Vulgar Latin variety spoken by Roman era occupiers of the: la Svizra), officially the Swiss Confederation (Confoederatio Helvetica in Latin Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. With the Roman conquest, Latin was spread to countries around the Mediterranean, including a large part of Europe. Romance languages, such as Aragonese, Corsican, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish, are descended from Latin, while many others,, hence its ISO The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO (pronounced /ˈaɪsoʊ/), is an international-standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on 23 February 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary industrial and commercial standards. It has its country codes CH and CHE As a member of the EFTA, Switzerland is included in the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics . The three NUTS levels are:), is a federal republic A federal republic is a federation of states with a republican form of government. A federation is the central government. The states in a federation also maintain the federation. Usage of the term republic is inconsistent but, as a minimum, it means a state or federation of states that does not have a monarchy consisting of 26 cantons The 26 cantons of Switzerland are the member states of the federal state of Switzerland. Each canton was a fully sovereign state with its own borders, army and currency from the Treaty of Westphalia until the establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848. The most recently created canton is the Canton of Jura, which separated from the Canton of, with Bern The city of Bern or Berne (German: Bern, pronounced [ˈbɛrn] ; French: Berne [bɛʀn]; Italian: Berna [ˈbɛrna]; Romansh: Berna [ˈbɛrnə]; Bernese German: Bärn [b̥æːrn]) is the Bundesstadt (federal city, de facto capital) of Switzerland, and, with about 130,000 people , the fourth most populous city in Switzerland. The Bern agglomeration, as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe Western Europe is the collection of countries in the westernmost region of Europe, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a cultural entity—the region lying west of Central Europe. Another definition was created during the Cold War and used to^{[note 4]} where it is bordered by Germany Germany (pronounced /ˈdʒɜrməni/ ), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south to the north, France France (pronounced /ˈfræns/ franss or /ˈfrɑːns/ frahns; French pronunciation (help·info): [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a member state of the European Union located in its western region, with several overseas territories and islands located on other to the west, Italy Italy /ˈɪtəli/ (Italian: Italia, [iˈta:lja]), officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica Italiana), is a country located partly on the European Continent and partly on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with to the south, and Austria Austria /ˈɔːstriə/ (German: Österreich (help·info)), officially the Republic of Austria (German: Republik Österreich), is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and and Liechtenstein The Principality of Liechtenstein (pronounced /ˈlɪktənstaɪn/ LIK-tən-styen; German: Fürstentum Liechtenstein, ˈfʏɐstəntuːm ˈliːçtənʃtaɪn (help·info)) is a doubly landlocked alpine microstate in Western Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over 160 km² (about 61.7 to the east.

Switzerland is a landlocked country A landlocked country is commonly defined as one enclosed or nearly enclosed by land. As of 2008, there are 44 landlocked countries in the world. Of the major landmasses, only North America and Australia do not have a landlocked country inside their respective continents whose territory is geographically divided between the Alps The Swiss Alps are the portion of the Alps mountain range that lies within Switzerland. Because of their central position with the entire Alpine range, they are also known as the Central Alps, the Central Plateau The Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau constitutes one of the three major landscapes in Switzerland alongside the Jura mountains and the Swiss Alps. It covers about 30% of the Swiss surface. It comprises the regions between the Jura and the Alps, partly flat but mostly hilly, and lies at an average height between 400 and 700 meters AMSL. It is by and the Jura The Jura Mountains are a small mountain range located north of the Alps, separating the Rhine and Rhone rivers and forming part of the watershed of each. The mountain range sensu Johann Gottfried Ebel is located in France, Switzerland, and Germany. The name “Jura” is derived from the Celtic root "jor" which was latinised into " that yields a total area of 41,285 km² (15,940 sq mi). The Swiss population of approximately 7.7 million people concentrates mostly on the Plateau, where the largest cities are to be found. Among them are the two global cities A global city is a city deemed to be an important node point in the global economic system. The concept comes from geography and urban studies and rests on the idea that globalization can be understood as largely created, facilitated and enacted in strategic geographic locales according to a hierarchy of importance to the operation of the global and economic centres of Zürich Zürich or Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. The city is Switzerland's main commercial and cultural centre and sometimes called the Cultural Capital of Switzerland, the political capital of Switzerland being Berne. Zürich can be counted as one of the world's pre-eminent global cities. According to and Geneva Geneva (French: Genève, German: Genf Genf , Italian: Ginevra, Romansh: Genevra) is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and is the most populous city of Romandie (the French-speaking part of Switzerland). Situated where the Rhône River exits Lake Geneva (in French also known as Lac Léman), it is the capital of the. Switzerland is one of the richest countries There are three lists of countries of the world sorted by their gross domestic product (the value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in a given year). The GDP dollar estimates given on this page are derived from purchasing power parity (PPP) calculations in the world by per capita It is also used in wills to indicate that each of the named beneficiaries should receive, by devise or bequest, equal shares of the estate. This is in contrast to a per stirpes division, in which each branch of the inheriting family inherits an equal share of the estate. It is usually a sum divided by an amount of people gross domestic product The gross domestic product or gross domestic income (GDI) is a basic measure of a country's overall economic output. It is the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a country in a year. It is often positively correlated with the standard of living, though its use as a stand-in for measuring the standard of living, with a nominal per capita GDP of $67,384.^[4] Zürich and Geneva have respectively been ranked as having the second and third highest quality of life in the world.^[6]

The Swiss Confederation has a long history of neutrality A neutral power in a particular war is a sovereign state which declares itself to be neutral towards the belligerents. A non-belligerent state does not need to be neutral. The rights and duties of a neutral power are defined in Sections 5 and 13 of the Hague Convention of 1907. A permanently neutral power is a sovereign state which is bound by—it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815—and was one of the last countries to join the United Nations The United Nations Organization or simply United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace. The UN was founded in 1945 after World War II to replace the League of. Switzerland is home to many international organisations, including the World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum is a Geneva-based non-profit foundation best known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland which brings together top business leaders, international political leaders, selected intellectuals and journalists to discuss the most pressing issues facing the world including health and the environment. The Forum also, the International Olympic Committee The International Olympic Committee is a corporation based in Lausanne, Switzerland, created by Pierre de Coubertin and Demetrios Vikelas on 23 June 1894. Its membership consists of the 205 National Olympic Committees, the Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties (signatories) to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and internal armed conflicts[citation needed], the World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization is an international organization designed by its founders to supervise and liberalize international trade. The organization officially commenced on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which commenced in 1947 and the second largest UN office The United Nations Office at Geneva is the second-biggest of the four major office sites of the United Nations (second to New York). It is located in the Palais des Nations building constructed for the League of Nations between 1929 and 1938 at Geneva in Switzerland, and expanded in the early 1950s and late 1960s. On the European level it was a founder of the European Free Trade Association The European Free Trade Association is a free trade organisation between four European countries that operates parallel, and is linked to, the European Union (EU) and is part of the Schengen Agreement The Schengen Agreement is a treaty signed in 1985, on the river-boat "Princess Marie-Astrid" anchored in Schengen, Luxembourg, between five of the ten member states of the European Community: Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany. The Convention implementing the Schengen Agreement supplemented it 5 years later,.

Switzerland comprises three main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, and Italian, to which the Romansh Romansh (also spelled Romansch, Rumantsh, or Romanche; Romansh: rumantsch/rumauntsch/romontsch; German: Rätoromanisch) is one of the four national languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian and French. It is one of the Rhaeto-Romance languages, believed to have descended from the Vulgar Latin variety spoken by Roman era occupiers of the-speaking valleys are added. The Swiss The Swiss are citizens of the Swiss Confederation, natives of Switzerland. The demonym derives from the toponym of Schwyz and has been in widespread use to refer to the Old Swiss Confederacy since the 16th century therefore do not form a nation A nation is a territory or country as political entity or a grouping of people who share real or imagined common history, culture, language or ethnic origin, often possessing or seeking its own government. The development and conceptualization of a nation is closely related to the development of modern industrial states and nationalist movements in the sense of a common ethnic or linguistic identity. The strong sense of belonging to the country is founded on the common historical background, shared values (federalism Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together with a governing representative head. The term federalism is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and constituent political units (like states or provinces). Federalism, direct democracy Direct democracy, classically termed pure democracy, is a form of democracy and a theory of civics in which sovereignty is lodged in the assembly of all citizens who choose to participate. Depending on the particular system, this assembly might pass executive motions, make laws, elect or dismiss officials, and conduct trials. Direct democracy, neutrality A neutral power in a particular war is a sovereign state which declares itself to be neutral towards the belligerents. A non-belligerent state does not need to be neutral. The rights and duties of a neutral power are defined in Sections 5 and 13 of the Hague Convention of 1907. A permanently neutral power is a sovereign state which is bound by)^[7] and Alpine The Alps are one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east; through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany; to France in the west symbolism.^[8] The establishment of the Swiss Confederation is traditionally dated to 1 August 1291; Swiss National Day The Swiss National Day is 1 August. It is inspired by the mention of "early August" (primo incipiente mense Augusto) in the Federal Charter of 1291. It was first celebrated in Berne in 1891, marking the 600th anniversary of the charter. It displaced the formerly more prominent traditional date of the Rütlischwur, 8 November 1307. Based is celebrated on the anniversary.

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