Tell that to my sister, who lives there!

OK, give me her email address! ;) But I meant there are no Swiss patois (what is the plural?). Sure there's loads of French, German, and Italian dialects (patois). I collected a bunch of Swiss German jokes and riddles for my folklore class in college. A friend's grandfather, though born in the US of A, was a fluent speaker. I thought it was beatiful on its own merits.

You haven't seen disdain until faced by a 'High German' speaker sneering at the yokels speaking "this low barbarian speech"

Oh, yes, I have! While studying the local dialect in Bonn in 1985 (and subsequent trips) [called Bönnsch], I was taken aside by a college student who chastised me for encouraging these people from propogating their mongrel German. The irony that one of the earliest printing presses was in Cologne [where they speak and drink Kösch] and that nearly a third of the books were published in the local dialect was lost on her. And this before High German had become standardized. Bönnsch and Kölsch are beautiful languages, quite alive and safe for the moment.