It’s not just cheese, chocolate, watches and Swiss Army knives: this week, after two years of deliberation, Unesco is about to honour Swiss yodelling as part of humanity’s cultural heritage. At least I hope they will.
When you think of yodelling, I suspect The Sound of Music pops into your head, complete with seven step-children in Dirndl and Lederhosen (never mind that the whole thing was set in Austria).
In Germany, however, Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and their legendary von Trapp family escape from the Nazis never became a shared childhood screen experience like in Britain or the US.
Instead, a 1978 yodelling sketch by the comedian and cartoonist Vicco von Bülow – better known as Loriot – is seared into German cultural memory. Loriot was a master of subtle, deadpan humour, skewering the absurdities of bourgeois life: dutiful housewives, overbearing husbands, and the stuffy madness of German normality.
In this particular sketch, disguised as a television feature, one such Hausfrau – Frau Hoppenstedt – attends a seminar at the fictional Vogler Institut für Modernes Jodeln in order to earn the desired degree: a Jodeldiplom.
When asked to recite the entirely non-fictional Erzherzog-Johann-Jodler “Holleri du dödl di, diri diri dudel dö”, Frau Hoppenstedt ties her tongue in Alpine knots, confusing “du dödl di” with “dö dudl dö” – which, according to a very earnest Dr Vogler, is “second future tense at sunrise”.
After the lesson, she explains to a reporter why she went to yodelling school at all: because a proper Hausfrau with a family should have completed a vocational training. And that she wants to feel as if she is standing on her own two feet, with “something of her own”, namely her yodelling diploma.
In German, the term has long since become shorthand for completely pointless educational qualifications.
Switzerland, however, begs to differ. There, yodelling is up and singing. The Swiss Jodler Association alone counts 12,000 active members. There are strict rules for competitions: sheet music must be submitted in advance, performers must appear in korrekter Tracht (the full Alpine look), and slip-ups mean instant disqualification.
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Zürich, meanwhile, has developed a lively wild yodelling scene – forget dirndls and rulebooks. Anyone can join, though it helps to know what yodelling is: a song drawn from the ancient mountain soul. Instead of words, syllables like “Holaria” or “Holadjo” are sung, with rapid jumps between deep chest voice and high falsetto. This transition is intended to be audible while in classical singing it is seamless.
The German Press Agency recently unearthed the official definition – not exactly Alpine poetry – from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture: “Yodelling opens up a broad spectrum of sound, from refined, classically beautiful singing to archaic, call-like vocalisation.”
Legend has it that shepherds once used it to communicate across distant alpine pastures. Now, the committee behind the Unesco application – the Centre for Appenzell and Toggenburg Folk Music – campaigns for children to be taught how to yodel as early as primary school.
Because although yodelling exists across the Alpine region, and even in Georgia and Zimbabwe, the Swiss insist their version is unique. Swiss purists maintain that true yodelling uses only the vowels O and U – and, possibly, Ü.
Which brings me to a linguistic mystery: why is it that Britons – despite centuries of Anglo-Saxon and French influence – have Hoppenstedt-like difficulty to master the humble Umlaut?
Here’s how it works: say “eeeeeh”, and while doing so, form a U with your lips. Voilà: Ü. For Ö (admittedly not part of the classic yodelling canon), start with “eeeeh” again and shape an O. Congratulations: you’ve unlocked level 1 of Alpine phonetics.
If you’ve now caught the yodelling bug, you might want to try it for yourself – and there’s a spot mid-January 2026 in Wiesbaden. True, it’s in Hesse, nowhere near Alpine solitude, but the artists’ association Künstlerverein Walkmühle runs a three-day group yodelling seminar with a musician from South Tyrol. Anyone can join, as long as you’re willing to part with €200 (£174) for the weekend. The downside: no Jodeldiplom.
But if you really want to yodel your way into higher education, there is at last a prestigious option: in 2023, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts awarded its first master’s with yodelling as a major.
