Rhaeto-Romance languages

Rhaeto-Romance languages are a Romance language sub-family which includes multiple languages spoken in north and north-eastern Italy, and Switzerland. The name "Rhaeto-Romance" refers to the former Roman province of Rhaetia.

Varieties

The area where Rhaeto-Romance languages (also called Ladin languages, not to be confused with Judaeo-Spanish) were spoken during the Middle Ages stretched from Switzerland to the Julian Alps (in modern-day western Slovenia).

Today some of the spoken varieties are:

• Friulian: Friuli region, Italy
• Ladin: Dolomite mountains in Italy (in Trentino, South Tyrol and the province of Belluno)
• Romansh: Switzerland. Romansh has status in Switzerland as a national language with three other national languages; however, its usage is rather limited to the canton of Grisons (Romansh: Grischun). It is composed of the following dialects:
  • Puter
  • Surmiran
  • Sursilvan
  • Sutsilvan
  • Vallader
  • Rumantsch Grischun, the standardized literary language, constructed by the Swiss linguist Heinrich Schmid in 1982.

The inclusion of the following two dialects in the Rhaeto-Romance languages is still debated (the so-called "Questione Ladina")

• Nones: Dolomite mountains in Italy (centered around the Val di Non (Non Valley) in Trentino)
• Solandro: Dolomite mountains in Italy (centered around the Val di Sole (Sole Valley) in Trentino)

Related languages

The family is most closely related to its nearest neighbors: French, Franco-Provençal, Occitan, Gallo-Italian (Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Venetian), and Istriote. A number of lexical items are shared with Ibero-Romance due to the similar date of latinization for both regions.

Origin

The Rhaeto-Romance languages originated as a dialect of the provincial Latin of the central Alps, which were incorporated into the Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus. Before the Roman conquest, this area was Celtic-speaking in the north and Rhaetian-speaking in the south. By the end of the Roman Empire, there was an unbroken region of distinctive Romance speech here, which was gradually fragmented into secluded areas in the high valleys by the encroachment of German from the north and of Italian from the south.

Features

Rhaeto-Romance is distinguished by a number of features which separate it from its neighbors.

• diphthongization of Vulgar Latin closed e into ei
  • pei "foot"
  • fieste "party, feast"

• occasional change of stressed a to e, particularly after a palatalized velar

• fronting of long u into ü (mainly Swiss)
  • Lad plü "more"

• loss of final vowels except -a, which often weakens to -e (in Friulian there is also a feminine plural in -is)
  • Lad sëra, Friul sere "evening"
  • Lad festa, Friul fieste "party"
  • Friul pie 'pia (pious, f.)' "press"

• general palatalization of the ca and ga groups
  • cjampanis "bells" [tʃampanis]

• conservation of cl-, pl-, fl-; conservation of Germanic w
  • SwRom clav/clev "key"
  • Friul plui "more"
  • SwRom flad, Lad fle, Friul flât "breath"
  • Lad vera, Friul vuere "war"

• voicing of intervocalic unvoiced consonants

• loss of intervocalic voiced consonants

• conservation of final -s leading to a single case based on the accusative (oblique); formerly a double case system
  • SwRom sunàis "to ring" [2nd p. sing.]
  • SwRom culinis "hills"
  • SwRom bels ölgs "beautiful eyes"

Examples

See also

• Rhaetian language, an unrelated language spoken in ancient times around the area where Rhaeto-Romance is now spoken.
• Western Romance languages

External links

• Ethnologue report for Rhaetian languages