a cabinet]; in Standard German, versorgen means to attend to someone) Swiss specifics In the area's cuisine, local culture and politics, there are numerous peculiarities that are not well known outside Switzerland and which do not have an equivalent standard German expression. Cuisine: Älplermagronen (meal with cut potatoes, Hörnli (Pipette Rigate), cream and melted cheese, Basler Läckerli, Gnagi, Kaffee fertig (coffee with schnaps), Quorn Local culture: Hornussen (a native throwing game, especially in the Canton of Bern), der/das Nouss ("dish" used in Hornussen), Schwingen (a kind of ring fight), Schwinget (tournament for said ring fight) State: Gemeindeversammlung (gathering of the voting community), Halbkanton (half-canton), Initiative, Landsgemeinde, Ständerat, Ständemehr, Vernehmlassung Pronunciation Because of their characteristic pronunciation, speakers of Swiss Standard German will be instantly recognized by other German speakers in most cases. In general, the pronunciation of Swiss Standard German is influenced by the respective Swiss German dialect of each speaker. The degree of that influence may vary according to their education. Stress Swiss German exhibits a strong trend toward stressing all words on the initial syllable: Family names including a preposition (such as von) are accented on the preposition rather than on the following word. Acronyms are stressed on the first letter rather than the last. Many loanwords are stressed on the first syllable regardless of how they are pronounced in the original language. Examples include Apostroph, Billet, Filet, Garage, Papagei, Portemonnaie and the exclamation Merci (thank you, borrowed from French). Consonants /b d g z/ are voiceless lenes There is no final-obstruent devoicing. /v/ is pronounced as an approximant ; in some words, it is replaced by a voiceless lenis , e.g. in Möve or Advent. Double consonants are often geminated, e.g. immer as . Initial is pronounced as a , for instance in local names like Chur and Cham or in foreign words like China or Chemie, Chirurgie etc. The ending is pronounced , not , e.g. König 'king' is pronounced [xs] or [çs], not [ks], e.g. Dachs as [] or sechs as 'six'. is not vocalized (that is, SSG is rhotic). In Switzerland, Vater 'father' is pronounced and not . In Switzerland (except the eastern part and Basel-Stadt) the alveolar is more usual than the uvular or . There is often no glottal stop which in other varieties of German is present at start of vowel-initial words. For some speakers, is always pronounced as , and not