Romansh (also spelled Romansch, Rumants(c)h, or Romanche; Romansh: rumantsch/rumauntsch/romontsch; German: Rätoromanisch) is one of the four national languages of Switzerland Switzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation (Confœderatio Helvetica in Latin, hence its ISO country codes CH and CHE), is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe[note 4] where it is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Italy to, along with German German (Deutsch, [ˈdɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native, Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 70 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. In addition, it is spoken by an additional 120 to 150 million people as a non-native language. Most native speakers are native bilinguals of both and French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in. It is one of the 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 province of Rhaetia once in the Roman Empire, believed to have descended from the Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin was the nonstandard form of the Latin language; because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography, and only Classical Latin was used in writing. It is sometimes called colloquial Latin variety spoken by Roman era The Roman era is a period in Western history, when Ancient Rome was the centre of power of the world around the Mediterranean Sea, where Latin was the lingua franca. The era precedes the Middle Ages occupiers of the region, and, as such, is closely related to French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in, Occitan Occitan is a Romance language spoken in Occitania, that is, Southern France, the Occitan Valleys of Italy, Monaco and in the Aran Valley of Spain. It is also spoken in the linguistic enclave of Guardia Piemontese . It is a co-official language in Catalonia, Spain (known as Aranese in Aran Valley). Modern Occitan is the closest relative of Catalan and Lombard Lombard is a member of the Gallo-Italic group within the Romance languages. It is spoken natively in Northern Italy and Southern Switzerland (Ticino and Graubünden), 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 Graubünden or Grisons (German: Graubünden, [ɡʁaʊˈbʏndən] ; Italian: Grigioni [ɡɾiˈdʒoni]; Romansh: Grischun [ɡɾiˈʒun]; see also other names) is the largest and easternmost canton of Switzerland. The canton shares international borders with Italy (Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol and Lombardy), Austria (Vorarlberg) and Liechtenstein (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.

Contents

Dialects

Romansh is an umbrella term An umbrella term is a word that provides a superset or grouping of related concepts, also called a hypernym covering a group of closely related dialects The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class. A dialect that is associated, spoken in southern Switzerland and all belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance 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 province of Rhaetia once in the Roman Empire language family. The other members of this language family are spoken in northern Italy Italy (pronounced /ˈɪtəli/ ; Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a country located partly on the European Continent and partly on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine. Ladin Ladin is a Rhaeto-Romance language spoken in the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy in the border regions of the provinces Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and Veneto. It is closely related to the Swiss Romansh, Surselvan and Friulian, to which Romansh is more closely related, is spoken by some 22,550 in the Dolomite mountains The Dolomites are a section of the Alps. They are located for the most part in the province of Belluno, the rest in the provinces of Bolzano-Bozen and Trento (all in north-eastern Italy). Conventionally they extend from the River Adige in the west to the Piave Valley (Pieve di Cadore) in the east. The northern and southern borders are defined by of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol , is an autonomous region in Northern Italy. It consists of two provinces: Trento and Bolzano-Bozen. The region was part of Austria-Hungary (and its predecessor, the Austrian Empire) from 1815 until its annexation by Italy in 1919. Together with the Austrian state of Tyrol it is represented by the Euroregion Tyrol-, and Friulian Friulian ( furlan or affectionately marilenghe in Friulian, friulano in Italian) (also Eastern Ladin), is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaetian family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy. Friulian has around 800,000 speakers, the vast majority of whom also speak Italian. It is sometimes called Eastern Ladin, since it shares is spoken by between 550,000 and 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 Ladin is a Rhaeto-Romance language spoken in the Dolomite mountains in Italy between the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and Veneto. It is closely related to the Swiss Romansh, Surselvan, and Friulian. The ISO 639 ISO 639 is the set of international standards that lists short codes for language names. It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 and withdrawn in 2002[citation needed] 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" (the English word "Welsh Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border, in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia, and the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand" had the same origin), for Chur Chur (German: Chur pronounced [ˈkuːr] , [ˈxuːʁ] (elsewhere); Alemannic German: Khûr; Romansh: Cuira IPA: [ˈkwera] or [ˈkwojra]; Italian: Coira [ˈkɔjra]); French: Coire; Latin: Curia, Curia Rhaetorum and Curia Raetorum) is the capital of the Swiss canton of Graubünden and lies in the northern part of the canton was once the center of Romansh. This is cited as one possible explanation of the origin of the modern term "Kauderwelsch" meaning gibberish Gibberish is a generic term in English for talking that sounds like speech, but carries no actual meaning. This meaning has also been extended to meaningless text or gobbledygook. The common theme in gibberish statements is a lack of literal sense, which can be described as a presence of nonsense. The word may derive from the word "jabber&. 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 speakers nowadays almost always are multilingual, being able to speak standard German and Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 70 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. In addition, it is spoken by an additional 120 to 150 million people as a non-native language. Most native speakers are native bilinguals of both as well as the local Graubünden dialect of Swiss German Swiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are called Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg which are closely associated to Switzerland's.[dubious – discuss].

Standardization

Romansh was nationally standardised in 1982 by Zürich Zürich or Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. While the municipality itself has 380,500 inhabitants, the Zürich metropolitan area is an urbanised area of international importance constituted by a population of nearly 2-based linguist Heinrich Schmid. The standardised language, called Rumantsch Grischun, has been slowly accepted[citation needed]. On the orthographic The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur or Serbian, there can be more than one orthography. Orthography is distinct from typography 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 Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 70 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. In addition, it is spoken by an additional 120 to 150 million people as a non-native language. Most native speakers are native bilinguals of both, French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in) and German spelling.

The Lia Rumantscha is the umbrella organization An umbrella organization is an association of institutions, who work together formally to coordinate activities or pool resources. In business, political, or other environments, one group, the umbrella organization, provides resources and often an identity to the smaller organizations. Sometimes in this kind of arrangement, the umbrella for all Romansh associations.

Official status in Switzerland

Romansh has been recognised as one of four "national languages" by the Swiss Federal Constitution The Federal Constitution of 18 April 1999 is the third and current federal constitution of Switzerland. It establishes the Swiss Confederation as a federal republic of 26 cantons (states), contains a catalogue of individual and popular rights (including the right to call for popular referendums on federal laws and constitutional amendments), 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 languages in Graubünden Graubünden or Grisons (German: Graubünden, [ɡʁaʊˈbʏndən] ; Italian: Grigioni [ɡɾiˈdʒoni]; Romansh: Grischun [ɡɾiˈʒun]; see also other names) is the largest and easternmost canton of Switzerland. The canton shares international borders with Italy (Trentino-Alto Adige/South Tyrol and Lombardy), Austria (Vorarlberg) and Liechtenstein canton (2000). Romansh speaking German speaking Italian speaking

Literature

See 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:

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 Romansh Bible

New Testament

Translated by Jachiam Bifrun:

L’g Nuof Sainc Testamaint da nos Signer Jesu Christi / prais our delg latin & our d’oters launguax & huossa da noef mis in Arumaunsch tres Jachiam Bifrun d’Agnedina [cited from Kantonsbibliothek Graubünden, Sig. KBG 1007:A:220], Basel, 1560.

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.

La sacra Biblia : quai ais tuot la Sonchia Scrittüra dal Vegl et Nouf Testamaint cun l’agiunta dall’apocrifa / vert. è stamp. ... in lingua romontscha d’Engiadina bassa tras comün cuost è lavur da Jacobo Antonio Vulpio & Jacob Dorta et ... Men Andrea Wilhelm Rauch, Nuot Nuot Schucan & Men Not Dorta,

Published in Scuol in the Lower Engadine, 1743. [Exemplar located at SILS/E-Biblioteca Engiadinaisa, Kasten. Sign.: BES 22].

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air through a phonemes In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances of Romansh (Rumantsch Grischun) are set out in the following chart:

Bilabial In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are: Labio- In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth dental In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth Dental In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as /t/, /d/, /n/, and /l/ in some languages. Dentals are primarily distinguished from sounds in which contact is made with the tongue and the gum ridge, as in English , due to the acoustic similarity of the sounds and the and alveolar Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue (so-called apical consonants), as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip (the " Alveolo- In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar fricatives, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate. They are similar to palato-alveolar and retroflex fricatives, but are laminal rather than apical or sub-apical as the retroflex fricatives are, palatal In phonetics, alveolo-palatal consonants are palatalized postalveolar fricatives, articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge, and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate. They are similar to palato-alveolar and retroflex fricatives, but are laminal rather than apical or sub-apical as the retroflex fricatives are, Post- Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate alveolar Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate Palatal Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex Velar
Stop p b t d k ɡ
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:

Show All>>

 

The above information uses material from Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Some facts may not have been fully verified for accuracy. [Disclaimers]
This page was last archived by our server on Sat Sep 4 13:22:28 2010. [ refresh local cache ]
Displaying this page or its contents does not use any Wikimedia Foundation's resources.
The owners of this site proudly support the Wikimedia Foundation.

[Hide]▼
'Romansh Language' News
Swiss Alps Ace: Port tennis standout heading to Switzerland - The Daily News of Newburyport
news.google.com
Swiss Alps Ace: Port tennis standout heading to Switzerland

The Daily News of Newburyport

"I'm hoping for Nick to learn what it's like to live there; to have the opportunity to see where I'm from, and improve his German language and learn about ...



and more &raquo;
Google News Search: Romansh language,
Sat Sep 4 13:22:30 2010
'Romansh Language' Blogs
a lesson from switzerland's multi-lingualism
culturalknowledge00000.blogspot.com
a lesson from switzerland's multi-lingualism

fffffffffffgrrrrrrr

hu, 26 Jun 2008 13:10:00 GM

in all schools, the mother tongue is taught as the first . language. as well as used as the . language. of instruction. students are also taught two other languages. (. romansh. is a minority . language. taught only in . romansh. -speaking areas.) ...

Google Blogs Search: Romansh language,
Sat Sep 4 13:22:30 2010
[Hide]▲