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Read somewhere that the numbers 2 and 3 are "zwoi" and "drüü" in some Swiss-German dialect as opposed to "zwei" and "drei" in high German. Not sure which one since there are many dialects in Switzerland.
How many different variations of the numbers "eins" to "zehn" (1 to 10) are there in German Switzerland? Could you please list them comparatively to high German and Standard Swiss German based on region?
The typical Swiss German forms are not zwöü and drü as opposed to Standard German zwei and drei. Instead, Swiss German dialects typically differentiate between drü and drei, whereas there is regional variation whereby some Swiss German dialects use the form zwöü while others use the form zwei. This means that the forms zwei and drei are also found in Swiss German.
The differentiation is based on gender. The numeral ‘two’ typically has three different forms:
The same differentiation used to be common in Standard German up to the 18th century. Doubtlessly, it is also found in dialects outside of Switzerland.
The numeral ‘three’ typically has two different forms:
The default forms when counting are the neutrum forms zwei and drü. There is a tendency towards merging the forms in the neutrum. In the early 20th century, that merger was complete in the cities of Basel, Schaffhausen and Murten as well as in the Wallis. I expect that the merger is now also common in other cities.
There is quite a lot of regional variation.
The Kleiner Sprachatlas der deutschen Schweiz, which contains excerpts from the Sprachatlas der deutschen Schweiz (SDS), has the following maps:
These two maps roughly show the following variation:
The Sprachatlas der deutschen Schweiz (SDS) has additional maps. They can be viewed with the SprachGIS – regionalsprachen.de, which is a very powerful tool, though I always have a hard time finding my way around it. And here it is:
By this method, I have found the following Sprachatlas der deutschen Schweiz maps for numerals (unfortunately, I have not succeeded in making the SprachGIS permalink feature work):
For numerals not found in the SDS, the Schweizerische Idiotikon is probably the best source, unless you want to browse through the regional dialect dictionaries (there is no entry for ‘ten’, though, since the Idiotikon is not finished yet):
