Romansh Grischun

Romansh is one of the four official languages of Switzerland, but it is spoken by less than 1% of the population. Romansh, part of the Romance group (like French), is not actually one language, rather it is an umbrella term for a group of dialects spoken in the south of the country.

 

Romansh was given the status of official language only in 1996, but to make administering this policy easier (regarding translation, for instance) a standardised version of the language was "cobbled together" from various dialects. This standardised version of Romansh is called Romansh Grischun (RG). The standardisation policy was designed to unite Romansh speakers, but, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported, a bitter skirmish has broken out in school classrooms of some Alpine villages.

 

Schools are being given grants and funds to teach RG and wean children off the dialects they speak at home. Some teachers continue to speak their own dialects, alongside RG, and some parents are annoyed because they can't understand their children's homework. Those against the policy say that it is ridiculous to spend money teaching a language that no-one speaks. Some people who want to protect the very small language Romansh are worried that if people have to unlearn their dialect and learn what amounts to almost a new language -- Romansh Grischun -- then they are just as likely to turn to German as an everyday language.

 

For more on this, see this Wall Street Journal article.

Comments

[Marc Leavitt]

Susan:
Having visited the lower Engadine, I attest the language is well.Government may back "official" Romansh; people speak their own dialects amongst themselves.

[Dw]

The article claims that romansh is "one of the last living relics of the Latin language".

Well I suppose it is, along with Spanish, Portuguese,
French, Italian an all the other Romance languages!

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks for your comments.

[web design Landon]

Government may back "official" Romansh people speak their own dialects amongst themselves.thanks for the blog..

[شقق للبيع في الاردن]

Thanks for the blog.. . .

[Davidjames]

Thank you for your interesting article.