Romansh language

Romansch Rumantsch
Spoken in:	Switzerland
Region:	Graubünden
Total speakers:	35,095 (Swiss federal census 2000)[1]
Language family:	Indo-European  Italic   Romance    Italo-Western     Western      Gallo-Iberian       Gallo-Romance        Gallo-Rhaetian         Rhaetian          Romansch
Official status
Official language in:	Switzerland
Regulated by:	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	rm
ISO 639-2:	roh
ISO 639-3:	roh
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Romansh (also spelled Romansch, Rumants(c)h, or Romanche) is one of the four official 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 60,815 in the "best command" plus "most spoken" categories^[2]. Spoken now by around 0.9% of Switzerland's 7.5 million inhabitants, it is Switzerland's least-used national language in terms of number of 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 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:

• 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 Julia 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 Müstair)

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.

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", 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.

Standardisation

Romansh was nationally standardised in 1982 by Zürich-based linguist Heinrich Schmid. The standardised language, called Rumantsch Grischun, has been slowly accepted. 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.

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.^[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.

Distribution of Romansh in canton Graubünden (2000), with Romansh areas shown in magenta.

Literature

See also: Romansh and Ladin 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:

MASSA BOD ! (TOO SOON ! )

O sblacha fluoretta, (O, pale little flow'ret,)

tu vainsch massa bod ! (Too soon thou art here !)

amo be suletta (Alone in the wildwood)

at dervasch nil god. (And full of vague fear.)

First Printed Romanscha Bible

by Jacobo N. Gadina, translated by Jacobo M. Wilhelm Rauch

La Sacra Biblia, quai ais tuot la Sonchia Scrittura:

dal Velg et Nouf Testamaint: cun l'agiunta dall' : Apocrifa

Vertida e stampada avant temp in Lingua Romanscha

d'Engadina Bassa tras comun cuost e` lavur da Jacobo :

Antonio Vulpio ...

...et Jacobo Dorta a´ Vulpera ...

...La II. editiun ...

...cun bleras novas declaranzas sur amaduos Testamaints,

una nova Prefatiun & un Register ...

...da Nott Da Porta,

published and printed in Scuol in Engadina Bassa (Lower Engadine),

Alta Rhaetia, 1743.

Phonology

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 /ə/ 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 /r/

  short elsewhere

• Stressed vowels in open syllables are:

  short before voiceless consonants

  long elsewhere

Lexis

Examples of Common Vocabulary:

Writing system

Romansh alphabet

L'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 that 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 ä, ö and ü in Romansh words. This practice, however, does not work in all cases, so other forms are used; for example, tsega,

Pronunciation

Consonants Vowels

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

• Heinrich Schmid, the linguist whose work on standardization of the language resulted in Rumantsch Grischun.

Footnotes

External links

• Romansh language, alphabet and pronunciation
• Grammatica d'instrunziun dal rumantsch grischun
• Information about the Romansh language
• Ethnologue report for Romansch
• Website of the Lia Rumantscha organization
• Dictionaries
  • Romansh-English
  • Romansh-English, with different Romansh dialects
  • Romansh-German/German-Romansh
• An Account of the Romansh Language by Joseph Planta FRS, originally published in the 1776 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. This paper was read to the Royal Society on 10 November 1775.
• Series of articles about Romansh from swissinfo
• Introduction to the Romansh language in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland
• Google Directory - about the Romansh language
• Content
  • Radio Televisiun Rumantscha
  • Lexicon Istoric Retic (LIR) - Encyclopedia about Switzerland. Partial translation of the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland in Romansh with additional articles.
  • Google Rumantsch