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Not to be confused with Romand, which is another term for the Franco-Provençal language.
Romansh (also spelled Romansch, Rumants(c)h, or Romanche; Romansh: rumantsch/rumauntsch/romontsch; German: Rätoromanisch) is one of the four national languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian and French. It is one of the Rhaeto-Romance languages, believed to have descended from the Vulgar Latin variety spoken by Roman era occupiers of the region, and, as such, is closely related to French, Occitan and North Italian, as well as other Romance languages to a lesser extent. As of the 2000 Swiss Census, it is spoken by 35,095[1] residents of the canton of Graubünden (Grisons) as the language of "best command", and 61,815 in the "best command" plus "most spoken" categories[2]. Spoken now by around 0.9% of Switzerland's 7.7 million inhabitants, it is Switzerland's least-used national language in terms of number of speakers.
[edit] DialectsRomansh 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 22,550 in the Dolomite mountains of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, and Friulian is spoken by around 550,000–595,000 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 Romansh 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" (the English word "Welsh" had the same origin), for Chur was once the center of Romansh. This is cited as one possible explanation of the origin of the modern term "Kauderwelsch" meaning gibberish. However, most of Grisons, including Chur and even its cross-river suburb of Wälschdorfli ("little foreign-language-speaking village"), now speak German; Romansh survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn. Romansh has survived much better in the German-speaking areas of Switzerland; in Italian-speaking areas, Romansh speakers tended to lapse into speaking Italian due to the much smaller language gap. [edit] StandardizationRomansh was nationally standardised in 1982 by Zürich-based linguist Heinrich Schmid. The standardised language, called Rumantsch Grischun, has been slowly accepted[citation needed]. 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 /tɕ/ followed by /a/, /o/, /u/ have <ch> (for example chalanda) as both speakers of Engadin (chalanda) and the Rhine territory (calanda) expect a spelling with <c>. However, <che> and <chi> are pronounced /ke/ and /ki/, <k> being a grapheme deemed unfit for a Romance language such as Romansh; therefore, words with /tɕ/ plus /e/ or /i/ have <tg> (for example tgirar) instead of <ch>. The use of <sch> for both /ʃ/ and /ʒ/, and of <tsch> for /tʃ/ 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. [edit] Official status in SwitzerlandRomansh 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.[3] In what the Federal Culture Office itself admits is "more a placatory and symbolic use"[4] of Romansh, the federal authorities occasionally translate some official texts into Romansh. 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.  [edit] LiteratureSee also: Romansh branch of Swiss literature 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. The first verse of three verse poem by Peider Lansel (1863-1943), translated by M.E. Maxfield:
[edit] First printed Romansh BibleNew Testament Translated by Jachiam Bifrun:
First (surviving) complete bible. The citation is of a self-described 2nd edition, augmented by Nott da Porta and others on the basis of an earlier, no longer surviving translation by Jacob Anton Vulpius and others going back to at least 1660, when a partial Old Testament was published.
Published in Scuol in the Lower Engadine, 1743. [Exemplar located at SILS/E-Biblioteca Engiadinaisa, Kasten. Sign.: BES 22]. [edit] Phonology[edit] ConsonantsThe consonant phonemes of Romansh (Rumantsch Grischun) are set out in the following chart:
[edit] VowelsThe vowel phonemes of Romansh are shown in the table below:
Schwa /ə/ occurs only in unstressed syllables. Vowel length is predictable:
[edit] LexisExamples of Common Vocabulary:
[edit] Writing system[edit] Romansh alphabetL'alfabet rumantsch
The letters k (ka), w (ve dubel), and y (ipsilon or i grec) are used only in words borrowed from foreign languages — for example: kilogram, ski, kino, kiosc, kilo, kilowat, Washington, western, stewardess, whisky, hockey, happy end. Because most Romansh-speaking people are familiar with German spelling, Romansh orthography borrows from the German language, rather than Italian: The "sh" sound, for example, is written in the Germanic fashion, "sch" (see "rumantsch"), not "sc" as in Italian, and one will find ö and ü in Romansh words. [edit] PronunciationConsonants Vowels [edit] Some common expressions
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] External links Romansh language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[edit] LiteratureBilligmeier, Robert H.: A Crisis in Swiss Pluralism: The Romansh and their Relations with German- and Italian Swiss in the Perspective of a Millenium. The Hague: Mouton 1979
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