Romansh

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Romansh

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 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 a non-official language, Serbo-Croatian with some 111,000 speakers.

Sociolinguistics

Romansh is not a single language but a group of closely-related dialects, all belonging to the family of the Rhaeto-Romance languages. Romansh is specifically the group of similar Rheto-Romance dialects spoken in southern Switzerland. 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 the northeast.

The five largest dialects in the Romansh family are:

The Rhine Dialects
- Sursilvan - in the Vorderrhein (Rain anteriur), including Lumnezia, Foppa, Cadi (Surselva)
- Sutsilvan - in the Hinterrhein (Rain posteriur), including Plaun, Tumliasco, Schons (Sutselva)
- Surmiran - in the Julier and Albula valleys, including Surses, Sutses (Surmeira)
The Engadine or Ladin Dialects
- Puter - the upper Engadine valley (Engiadin' Ota)
- Vallader - the lower Engadine valley (Engiadina Bassa) and the Mustair valley (Val Mustair)

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.

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 (for example chalanda) as both speakers of Engadin (chalanda) and the Rhine territory (calanda) expect a spelling with . However, and are pronounced and , being a grapheme deemed unfit for a Romance language such as Romansh; therefore, words with plus or have (for example tgirar) instead of . The use of for both and , and of for is taken over from German, making Romansh spelling a compromise between Romance (Italian, French) and German spelling.

The Lia Rumantscha is the umbrella organization for all Romansh associations. Its web site provides further background information.

Literature

''See Swiss literature#Romansch and Ladin branch

The emergence of Romansh as a literary language is generally dated to the mid-16th century.

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Romansh (Rumantsch Grischun) are set out in the following chart:

	Bilabial	Labio- dental	Dental and alveolar	Alveolo- palatal	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stop
Affricate
Nasal
Fricative
Approximant
Lateral approximant

Vowels

The vowel phonemes of Romansh are shown in the table below:

Monophthongs	Front	Back
Close
Mid
Open-mid
Open

Diphthongs	Closer component is front	Closer component is back
Closing
Opening

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

Unstressed vowels are short.
Stressed vowels in closed syllables (those with a coda) are:
long before
short elsewhere
Stressed vowels in open syllables are:
short before voiceless consonants
long elsewhere

Some common expressions

allegra - hello

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?

External links

Further information

de:Heinrich Schmid: German Wikipedia on the linguist whose work on standardisation of the language resulted in Rumantsch Grischun.

Minority languages | Rhaeto-Romance languages | Languages of Switzerland | Endangered languages | Grisons

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