Romansh, also called Rhaeto-Romansh, belongs to the Gallo-Romance languages, a group of the Italic-Romance languages in the Indo-European language family. It forms a genetic group together with Ladin and Friulian. Romansh is spoken by approximately 38,000 Romansh people in the Swiss Canton of Graubünden in the southeast of Switzerland and is one of the four official languages of Switzerland.
Due to the former remoteness of many villages and valleys of the Canton of Graubünden, several varieties developed, which can be divided in five groups: Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Puter and Vallader. Every one of these dialects developed its own written language, which form a compromise between different local and regional dialects.
Since 1982 there is an artificial written language (Rumantsch Grischun), which is not based on one of the regional dialects, but takes into account the distinctive features from all the dialects. Since 2001 Rumantsch Grischun has been the official written language in the Canton of Graubünden and in Switzerland for correspondance with the Romansh-speaking population; the official language in municipalities is still the local dialect.
Hello - allegra
Thank you - grazia
Cheers - viva
You are not alone - TI N’ES BETG SULET
Typical for Romansh is the word-end “–ziun” or letter combinations such as “tg” or “aun”/”eun”, which cannot be found in the neighbouring Italian language.
Romansh in Switzerland (38.000 Speaker)