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Romansh (also spelled Rumantsch, Romansch or Romanche) is one of the four national languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian and French. It is one of the three Rhaeto-Romance languages, believed to have descended from the Vulgar Latin variety spoken by Roman era occupiers of the region, and, as such, somewhat resembles Italian, French, Spanish and Catalan. It is spoken by about 50,000-70,000 people in the canton of Graubünden (Grisons), of which about 35,000 speak it as their first language. Spoken by fewer than 1% of Switzerland's 7.4 million inhabitants, it is the smallest of Switzerland's national languages in terms of number of speakers, about half the size of Switzerland's largest community of speakers of non-official languages (the mutually intelligible Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian), with some 111,000 speakers.
Dialects Romansh is an umbrella term covering a group of closely-related dialects, spoken in southern Switzerland and all belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance language family. The other members of this language family are from northern Italy: Ladin, with which Romansh is more closely related, is spoken by some 20,000 in the Dolomite mountains of the Italian Tyrol, and Friulian is spoken by around 500,000-600,000 people in northeastern Italy. The five largest dialects in the Romansh family are: Puter and Vallader are sometimes referred to as one specific variety known as ladin, as they have retained this word to mean "Romansh". However, ladin is primarily associated with the closely related language in Italy's Dolomite mountains also known as Ladin. The ISO 639 language codes are rm and roh.Romansch is spoken in the Swiss canton of Grisons or Graubünden, "the Grey League", which preserves the name of the self-defense organization of Romance speakers set up in the 15th century. It became part of Switzerland in 1803. Germans once called this language Chur-Wälsch, "foreign speech of Chur", for Chur was once the center of Romansch. Chur, even its cross-river suburb Wälschdorfli "foreign village", now speaks German: Romansch survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn. Standardisation Romansh was standardised in 1982 by Zürich-based linguist Heinrich Schmid. The standardised language, called Rumantsch Grischun, has not been very well accepted, and speakers of the different dialects tend to address one another in German. This is leading to an acceleration of the decline of the language. On the orthographic level, Schmid sought to avoid all "odd-looking" spellings, in order to increase general acceptability of the new idiom and its spelling. Therefore, words with followed by , , have The Lia Rumantscha is the umbrella organization for all Romansh associations. Official status in Switzerland Romansh has been recognised as one of four "national languages" by the Swiss Federal Constitution since 1938. It was also declared an "official language" of the Confederation in 1996, meaning that Romansh speakers may use their Romansh idiom for correspondence with the federal government and expect to receive a Romansh response – in Rumantsch Grischun, because the federal authorities use the standardised idiom exclusively. However, the Constitution specifies that only native Romansh speakers can claim this privilege.• In what the Federal Culture Office itself admits is "more a placatory and symbolic use" of Romansh, the federal authorities occasionally translate some official texts into Romansh and the official logo of the Confederation features all four languages. In general, though, demand for Romansh-language services is low, because according to the Federal Culture Office, Romansh speakers may either dislike the official Rumantsch Grischun idiom or prefer to use German in the first place, as most are perfectly bilingual. On the cantonal level, Romansh is an official language only in the trilingual canton of Graubünden, where the municipalities in turn are free to specify their own official languages. Literature See Swiss literature#Romansch and Ladin branch The emergence of Romansh as a literary language is generally dated to the mid-16th century. The Engadine dialect was first printed as early as 1552 in Jacob Bifrun's Christiauna fuorma, a catechism; a translation of the New Testament followed in 1560. Consonants The consonant phonemes of Romansh (Rumantsch Grischun) are set out in the following chart: Vowels The vowel phonemes of Romansh are shown in the table below: Schwa occurs only in unstressed syllables. Vowel length is predictable: Some common expressions allegra - hello or welcome co vai? - how are you? fa plaschair - pleased to meet you bun di - good morning buna saira - good evening buna notg - good night a revair - goodbye a pli tard - see you later perstgisai - I beg your pardon i ma displascha - I'm sorry perdunai - excuse me per plaschair - please grazia fitg - thank you very much anzi - you're welcome gratulazions - congratulations bun cletg - good luck ils quants è oz? - what's the date today? quants onns has ti? - how old are you? viva - cheers See also Footnotes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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