Romansh

The Romansh (autoglottonym: rumantsch) (also called Romansh , Roman Rhetoric, Rhaetian or Grisson) is the generic name for the Romance Rhetoric languages spoken in Switzerland, where it is recognized as a national language. As a language of the Romanic group, it has a great affinity with Dolomite Ladin and Friulan, languages spoken in northern Italy. Romansh is currently restricted to some villages in the mountainous canton of Grisons (Switzerland).

According to the Federal Population Census of the year 2000, 60,561 inhabitants of Switzerland speak this language, or 0.8% of the country's population. It is the primary language of 35,095 people, representing 0.5% of all residents. Most of these are in Grisons and the rest in the diaspora throughout Switzerland. The use of this language is slowly receding (−15% over 10 years and is spoken by less than 100,000 people), raising fears for its future. In order to counteract this trend, the Swiss Confederation supports the canton of Grisons for the safeguarding and promotion of Romansh. The language is only used in Grisons and within the canton, especially in the Albula, Surselva, Engadine Bassa/Val Müstair regions and in the ¾ of the Maloja (Engadine) region. It is also used in the communes of Cazis, Ferrera and Andeer in the Viamala region and in Domat/Ems, Trin and Felsberg in the Imboden region. These territories represent about 40% of the cantonal territory.

Historical, social and cultural aspects

Italy Anonaria at 400 AD

Historically, Romansh is what remains of the complete Latinization that occurred in Roman Recia, during the first centuries of the Roman Empire.

This process was so complete that the confines of Italy were brought to the Danube by Emperor Diocletian in Italia Anonaria.

Slowly the Latinized area north of the Alps shrank over the centuries after the collapse of the Roman Empire, but in present-day Switzerland there is still a large Romansh-speaking Neo-Latin community: the Ladins of the Canton of Grisons.

Standardization

In 1982, Romansh was standardized under the normative variety Rumantsch Grischun ("Romansh Grison"), designed by Swiss linguist Heinrich Schmid, who tried to avoid the use of unusual-looking spellings for acceptance of this new standard. Therefore, in words that have the phoneme /tɕ/ followed by the vowels /e/ or / i/, the digraph «tg» (tgirar) is used to represent this sound instead of the digraph «ch». In words where the phoneme /k/ precedes the vowels /a/, /o/ or /u/, they are written with «ch» («chalanda» instead of Calanda). Similarly, che and chi (because of this rule, called Leza Uffers Kompromiss) are pronounced [ke] and [ki]. On the other hand, the letter "k" becomes an unnecessary grapheme in this Romance language. Likewise, the phoneme [ə] is written with the letter «e», a characteristic of the marked influence of German spelling. Among other characteristics, the trigrade «sch» is also used to represent the fricative phonemes /ʃ/ and /ʒ/, and "tsch" for /ʧ/.

On the other hand, the fact that <ü, ö> in Rhaetian, this may not be due only to the absence of [y] and [ø] in most Rhaetian languages, but also to its graphic form (due to German influence), which is not considered a Romance form. In addition, this also shows that the adoption of a certain spelling is not always related to phonetic factors. In conclusion, it can be stated that the Rhaetian orthography is located between the Romance orthographic tradition of Italian and French and the Germanic orthographic tradition of German.

The Lia Rumantscha is an umbrella organization for Rhaetian language associations. Their website provides more information on these languages.

Variants

Historical distribution of romache, German and Italian dialects in Grisons:
Sursilvano Tuatschin
Sutsilvano Southmiran Putèr Vallader Jauer

The five established dialects of Romansh are Suprasylvanian, Subsylvanian, Supramiran, Upper Engadin (putér) and Lower Engadin (vallader). Puter and Vallader are sometimes considered a single dialect: Engadin.

puter and vallader are sometimes considered one language: ladin. Ladin, for its part, is sometimes associated with the Romance Rhetoric language of the Italian Dolomite Mountains, also known as Dolomite Ladin. (It must be taken into account that ladino, derived from Latin, is also one of the names of Judeo-Spanish). However, Romansh (rumantsch) and Dolomite Ladin have been territorially separated at least since the 16th century, when most of the population of South Tyrol/Bolzano Province already spoke the German language until further south of Salorno near Rovereto. Romansh was still spoken in today's Austrian Land of Vorarlberg until the mid-18th century, but the immigration of German-speaking Walsers - drawn from the Vales by the Austrian Habsburgs - pushed back Romansh-speakers to small pockets in Grisons, mainly in the redoubt of the Engadin.

Officiality

The first Swiss constitution of 1848, and its 1872 revision, omitted any reference to Romansh, although the federal government funded a translation of the text into two of the main Romansh dialects in 1872. Romansh became in 1938 "national language" of Switzerland, after a referendum, however that did not make it an official language. The recognition of Romansh as the fourth language of the country occurred in the preamble to World War II.

Swiss franc series in romanche.

The Swiss National Bank planned to introduce Romansh text on legal circulation banknotes in 1956. When new series of banknotes were added in 1976, Romansh was finally introduced.

Following a referendum on March 10, 1996, Romansh was partially recognized as an official language alongside German, French and Italian in Article 70 of the Swiss Constitution.

The Swiss Army attempted to introduce Romansh as an internal language between 1988 and 1992. Official use of Romansh in the military ceased in 1995.

Language classification

Romansh is a language of the Romance rhetoric branch of the Romance subfamily of the Indo-European family.

Within the Romance languages, Romansh is associated with another Rhaeto-Romance language spoken in the Dolomite mountains of Italy, known as Dolomitic Ladin. However, Romansh and Ladin have been territorially separated at least since the 16th century, when most of the population of South Tyrol (Province of Bolzano) already spoke the German language as far south as Salorno near Rovereto. Romansh was still spoken in the present-day Austrian Land of Vorarlberg until the mid-18th century, but the immigration of German-speaking Walsers drawn from the Vales by the Austrian Habsburgs pushed Romansh-speakers back into small pockets of Grisons, mainly in the redoubt of the Engadine.

Linguistic description

Phonology

The consonantal phonemes of Romansh are shown in the following table:

The vowel phonemes of Romansh are shown in the chart below.

Monoptongos	Previous	Poster
Closed	i	u
Media	♫
Semiabierta	‐
Open	a

Diptongos	Component closing is previous	Component closing later
Decreasing	ai	au
Growth	ie

Schwa /ə/ occurs only in unstressed syllables. Vowel length is predictable:

• Atonous mouths: short.
• Tonic mouths in closed syllables (those with a elbow) are:

  long before /r/

  cut anywhere else

• Tonic mouths in open syllables are:

  short before deaf consonants

  long anywhere else

Comparison of lexicon between the different dialects

Some Common Expressions

• Allegra. - 'Hello' or 'Welcome'
• Co vai? - 'How are you?'
• Bun di - 'Good morning'
• Buna saira. - 'Good afternoon'
• Buna notg. - Good night.
• To revair. - Bye.
• A pli tard. - 'See you later.'
• Perstgisai. - Sorry.
• Perdunai. - Sorry.
• Per plaschair. - 'Please'
• Grazia fitg. - 'Thank you very much.'
• Gratulaziuns. - Congratulations.
• Bun cletg. - Good luck.
• Ils quants è oz? - 'What's the date today?'
• Quants onns have you? - 'How old are you?'
• Viva! - 'Live!'