Romansh language

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Romansh (also spelled Rumantsch, Romansch or Romanche) is one of the four national languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian and French. It is a Romance language, believed to have descended from the vulgar Latin spoken by Roman era occupiers of the region, and, as such, somewhat resembles Italian and French. It is spoken by around 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.

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Sociolinguistics

Romansh is not a single language but a group of closely-related languages or dialects, all belonging to the family of the Rhaetian languages. The group of various Rhaetian languages spoken in Switzerland is termed Romansh; the other members of the group are from northern Italy: Friulian, spoken by around 500,000-600,000 people in the northeast, and Ladin, spoken by some 20,000 in the Dolomite mountains of the Italian Tyrol.

The five largest languages in the Romansh family are Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Puter and Vallader. Puter and Vallader are sometimes considered one language: Ladin. Ladin is sometimes associated with the language in Italy's Dolomite mountains also known as Ladin. The ISO 639 language codes are rm and roh.

Standardization

Romansh was standardized in 1982 by Zürich-based linguist Heinrich Schmid. The standardized 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 /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. Its web site provides further background information.

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 p  b   t  d       k  g
Affricate     ts tɕ  dʑ tʃ    
Nasal m   n     ɲ ŋ
Fricative   f  v s  z   ʃ  ʒ    
Approximant     r     j  
Lateral approximant     l     ʎ  

Vowels

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

Monophthongs Front Back
Close i u
Mid ə
Open-mid ɛ ɔ
Open a
Diphthongs Closer component
is front 		Closer component
is back
Closing ai au
Opening ie  

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

External links

Further information

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