Zürich Letter:FIRST THING in the morning, the kindergarten in Zürich's Kesslerstrasse resembles a tower of Babel in Munchkinland.
Tiny figures run into the building chatting in Italian, Portuguese, Albanian, Croatian and Arabic. When they finally settle down, only one language is allowed: German - not the Schweizerdeutsch (Swiss-German) they hear on the street, but the local variety of Hochdeutsch, standard "high" German.
Two years ago, the melodic tones of Swiss-German were all but banished from the kindergartens of Zürich and eight other cantons of German-speaking Switzerland.
A new law decreed that only "Swiss songs, rhymes and stories" could be taught in the native language. The rest of the teaching time must be in the "standard language" of high German.
Kindergarten teachers are unhappy with the situation and are lobbying politicians to change the law.
"Ninety-five per cent of all kindergarten teachers want to use Swiss-German as the standard teaching language," Gabriella Fink, president of the Association of Zürich Kindergarten Teachers, told the Neue Zürcher newspaper. "When we use half Swiss-German and half standard German we confuse the children more than we help them."
Politicians and officials are having none of it, suggesting that Switzerland's poor showing in international education studies is partly due to the widespread use of Swiss-German in the early years of education.
"The kindergarten teachers are complaining because they have to change their ways, nothing more," says Esther Guyer, president of all state kindergartens in Zürich.
"Standard German has always been there as the written language and it always will be. It is the only language in school and, in these globalised times, we can't be thinking locally." For German-speaking visitors, Swiss-German is a delightfully unintelligible experience, a slippery beast with endless regional disguises.
Starting with three basic dialects, the language alters its sound the further it gets from cities, even varying from one mountain village to another.
Swiss-German, with fleeting, familiar German words surrounded by guttural sounds similar to Dutch, is used in every situation of daily life.
In contrast to the case with some other European languages, its use is not perceived as a sign of lower socio-economic status but a sign of local pride and identity.
Now the kindergarten row has been dragged into a wider discussion about Swiss identity in the face of an unprecedented wave of emigration from Germany.
More than 200,000 Germans were registered as resident in Switzerland last year, 30,000 more than the year before and 10 times more than a decade ago.
Germans now make up 40 per cent of the country's immigrant population, prompting the Blick tabloid to ask: "How many Germans can Switzerland take?" In a survey, two-thirds of readers agreed with the view that "there are too many Germans here".
Blick stirred things up further with statistics showing how German workers - tradesmen, hotel staff, doctors and builders - are first drawn to higher wages in Switzerland and then undercut Swiss workers.
The issue of German immigration is a thorny question in Zürich, where the sound of standard German is commonplace on the street and in public transport.
"In kindergartens, I think the earlier children have standard German the better," said young mother Tanja Hanart. "But I worked in a Swiss cultural magazine where three of the top four journalists were German. We only spoke standard German and that was too much."
Residents of Zürich like their city's cosmopolitan flair but they are forced to wonder sometimes - for example when, last December, the University of Zürich appointed eight new professors who were all German. The University of Lucerne has a German majority on the faculty of two departments.
"There are Germans everywhere you look so that I can barely speak Swiss-German anymore," said Zürich-born painter Regula Sutter. "They don't learn Swiss-German but if I refuse to speak standard German, I'm a racist."
The arrival of ever more Germans has revived old feelings: German confidence is perceived as arrogance, their use of the language aggressive and hard for Swiss ears.
And then there's the "big neighbour" syndrome.
"Switzerland is a small country. Germany is 10 times bigger and better in sport," said Prof Ueli Mäder, a sociologist at the University of Basel. "Some prejudices against Germans come from an inferiority complex; some Swiss feel like the underdogs."
The new arrivals from Germany rave about Switzerland's high quality of life and lower taxes, but some are noticing a backlash. "Sometimes I notice a dismissive look when I open my mouth, or I am left to wait in a shop while Swiss customers are served," said one German journalist.
German-born blogger Jens-Rainer Wiese hopes the fuss will soon die down or the media will soon find a new target.
"For instance, there are 300,000 Italians living here," he asks. "How many Italians can Switzerland take?"