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Romansh is a Romance language spoken in the Graubünden canton of eastern Switzerland, and is one of the official languages of the country. It is the native language of about 40,000 Swiss people and, of the major Romance languages, is most closely related to French. However, the accent and writing system of its speakers appear to the casual observer to more closely resemble Italian and German – a significant fact in historical conflicts over the region. Romansh is actually an umbrella term for several dialects, with each speech community in the region using different names for them. The term ‘Romansh’ is itself an anglicisation of the various local language names, including Romansch in German, and Rumantsch in Romansh itself. It is most closely related to Ladin and Friulian, varieties spoken in northern Italy, and together these form the Rhaeto-Romance sub-family of Gallo-Romance, a larger group that includes French and various varieties of northern Italy. These are only distantly related to standard Italian. 'Rhaeto-Romance' is sometimes considered a single language, and its three varieties dialects, and on occasions, 'Ladin' has been used to mean any or all of these.
References
- No-one is too sure, as Billigmeier (1979: 10) explains.
- Haiman (1998: 351).
- See Head (1995: 42-43) for a historical account of cultural divisions in Graubünden.
- Ethnologue: Switzerland; Haiman & Beninca (1992: 20).
- Haiman & Beninca (1992: 4).
- Harris (1988: 21) argues that the Rhaeto-Romance forms are "characterised more by their differences from the major Romance language groups than by a set of shared features common only to themselves," and "it is not possible to point to a common substrate... which would justify the tradition of treating these dialects together."
- This was enough for the early Romanist Diez to dismiss it as a Romance language (Haiman & Beninca 1992: 3).
- Haiman & Beninca (1992: 29).
- Rash (1998: 51).
- Haiman (1988: 352).
- Rash (1998: 45).
- One example of this is in the army, where minority soldiers must learn German whilst others are instructed in their own languages - see Rash (1998: 69).
- Swiss German and standard German are very different dialects, with low mutual intelligibility.
- Rash (1998: 45-46).
- Until 1996, when a university opened in Italian-speaking Ticino, all universities used either German or French.
- Rash (1998: 29).
- Harris (1988: 22); Haiman (1988: 352).
- Rash (1998: 33).
- Rash 1998: 30.
- Billigmeier (1979: 373-374).
