“May have to learn some of the Austrian language in case I can go one day.” LOL I know what you did there. Mr. Mercat and I spent five weeks in Europe this fall, most of them in southern Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. The German I studied six months prior (four hours a day) was “High German.” It helped but only because the nice people in Switzerland and Austria also spoke that dialect and a lot of them spoke English. In the Alps whether Austria or Switzerland - there is something called “dialect” which they claim is a form of German but was totally incomprehensible to me. I guess its a bit like creole in either south LA or the Caribbean. Not that it sounds like that but the folks in LA and the Caribbean are not aware that they are not speaking English. I love languages. If I were starting over I would study as many different languages as I could. At 68 its a lot harder than it would have been at 9.
I’d make a distinction between Switzerland and Austria here. Swiss German is practically a different language (with many regional dialects within it too). It’s at least as different as spoken Swedish and Norwegian are to each other. Austrian German, even in its regional varieties, strikes me as much closer to standard “Hochdeutsch,” just sometimes with a very thick accent. There are actually language programs available to learn Swiss German, but Austrian German is just considered to be German.
With my imperfect High German, I can still understand Austrians fairly decently, even when they are from Vorarlberg, which has strong Swiss influences. In contrast, I couldn’t make out more than a word or two here and there of Swiss German. I noticed interestingly that on Swiss TV they mostly show High German programming from what I’ve seen.