Dorothy Susan Davis, age 9, of Graham, N.C., for her question:

What language is spoken in Switzerland?

The little country of Switzerland nestles high on the snowy shoulders of the Alps in Central Europe. It is bordered by France and Germany, Austria and Italy. And tucked between the border of Austria and Switzerland is the tiny country of Liechtenstein. There are about 5 million Swiss people in the small country, but they do not have a Swiss language with which to talk to each other.

Most of the Swiss have borrowed their languages from the larger countries along their borders. About 3 million of them speak a branch or dialect of the German language. This German Swiss language is somewhat different from real German, and the people of Germany find it hard to understand. Some Swiss speak a dialect of French and Some Speak an Italian dialect. In a few parts of Switzerland the people speak a language called Rhaeto Romanic, and this rather special language comes down from the Latin of ancient Rome.