In German, the language of the majority,4 it is Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, which is as hard to translate as it is to say. The closest in English is Swiss Confederation, the phraseology also used by French, Italian and Romansh, the other three national languages: Confédération suisse, Confederazione svizzera and confederaziun svizra. In reality Eidgenossenschaft means something more like ‘the brotherhood of men who stood in a field and swore an oath of eternal cooperation and friendship’; confederation is a lot simpler. Eidgenosse is still used by the German-speaking population to refer
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