“Allegra!” Meet our language

This only changed in 1938 when Romansh (or “Rumantsch”, as its speakers call it) was recognised as Switzerland’s fourth national language, alongside German, French and Italian. With great success: today, “our” language belongs to the Swiss cultural scene as much as skiing belongs to the Engadin winter.

After the ancient Romans conquered the province of Raetia in 15 BC, the language of the soldiers and settlers mixed with the local dialects. With the arrival of Germanic tribes in the 8th and 9th Centuries, however, this “Rumauntsch” lost ground in large areas of eastern Switzerland to retreat to the valleys of the Engadin, where over the course of the centuries it has also had to resist encroachment by Italian.

One language – five dialects

The Romansh-speaking community has never been large – the number of native speakers continues to fluctuate between 45,000 and 60,000. The topography of Graubünden, with its “1,000 peaks and 150 valleys”, hindered the development of a cultural centre for the region and a unified grammar and vocabulary. Today, linguists identify five official dialects: Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Vallader and Puter, with the latter spoken in the Upper Engadin.

In the mid-19th century, the economic boom brought a flourishing tourism industry to Graubünden. German soon became widely spoken: between 1850 and 1930, the proportion of Romansh speakers fell by almost half.

«Ni Italians, ni Tudais-chs! Rumantschs vulains restar!»

Eventually Graubünden started to promote this Germanisation process officially – but the canton had not reckoned with determined resistance by locals. In 1919, activists founded the “Lia Rumantscha” (Romansh League) in order to protect their language from the threat of exclusion – not only by German but by Italian, too. Many Italian linguists and politicians regarded Romansh as no more than a Lombard dialect, and Mussolini even played with the idea of “liberating” the canton and annexing it to Italy. The passionate call by the Romansh poet Peider Lansel struck a chord with native speakers: “Ni Italians, ni Tudaischs! Rumantschs vulains restar!” (“Neither Italians nor Germans! We want to stay Romansh!”)

Remarkable solidarity

On 20 February 1938, church bells in Graubünden rang for an exceptionally long time: the results of a historic poll prompted celebration throughout the region. An overwhelming majority of Swiss citizens – more than 91% – chose to recognise Romansh as the fourth national language. Mind you, a national language is not the same as an official language: while the first “just” recognises a language at national level, it is only the latter that guarantees that cantonal and federal authorities can also communicate in this language. Only in 1996 did Romansh achieve the status of “partial official language”; for native speakers, it has been recognised as a full official language since 1999.

Rumantsch Grischun: how a standardised language is born

With this official acceptance, the authorities faced a tricky problem: as their staff could not possibly master every one of the many Romansh dialects, a standardised written language had to be created. The Lia Rumantscha did not wait to be asked twice, and in 1982 presented “Rumantsch Grischun” as a new standard language, based on the five official dialects. Today, the federal authorities and the Romansh news media publish in Rumantsch Grischun. In the world of IT, too, the standard language is gaining acceptance: Wikipedia, Google and Microsoft Office all “speak” Rumantsch Grischun. In the Romansh-speaking regions, however, the dialects are preserved as written languages.