Feminine forms are always regular, but the stem vowel sometimes alternates in the masculine forms:Sursilvan also distinguishes an attributive and predicative form of adjectives in the singular. Coray (2008). Official use of Romansh as a language of command was discontinued in 1995 as part of a reform of the Swiss military.Grisons is the only canton of Switzerland where Romansh is recognized as an official language.
Since the cantonal constitution explicitly named Sursilvan and Engadinese as the language of ballots, a referendum was launched to amend the relevant article.A major change in policy came in 2003, when the cantonal government proposed a number of spending cuts, including a proposal according to which new Romansh teaching materials would not be published except in Rumantsch Grischun from 2006 onwards, the logical result of which would be to abolish the regional varieties as languages of instruction. A phenomenon known as “hardened diphthongs”, in which the second vowel of a falling Diphthong is pronounced as [k], was once common in Putèr as well, but is nowadays limited to Surmiran: Romansh is written in the Latin alphabet, and mostly follows a Phonemic orthography, with a high correspondence between letters and sounds. Due to financial difficulties, most of these merged into a pan-regional daily newspaper called La Quotidiana in 1997. The federal government did finance a translation of the constitution into the two Romansh varieties Sursilvan and Vallader in 1872, noting however that these did not carry the force of law.This status did have disadvantages however. A definite article (masc. Before that, the inhabitants spoke It is unknown how rapidly the Celtic and Raetic inhabitants were At the time, Romansh was spoken over a much wider area, stretching north into the present-day cantons of In addition, beginning around 1270, the German-speaking Instead, several regional written varieties of Romansh began appearing during the 16th century. According to Article 3 of the cantonal constitution however, the municipalities are to “take into consideration the traditional linguistic composition and respect the autochthonous linguistic minorities”. The Italian dialectologist Ascoli for instance described Romansh as “a body that has lost its soul and taken on an entirely foreign one in its place” in the 1880s.Romansh had a rich oral tradition before the appearance of Romansh writing, but apart from songs such as the In the Sursilvan dialect, the first surviving works are also religious works such as catechism by Daniel Bonifaci and in 1611, Non-religious writings in Romansh began appearing in the second half of the 19th century in substantial numbers. Within the Romance languages, Romansh stands out through its peripheral location, which manifests itself through several archaic features. The orthography of The following description deals mainly with the Sursilvan dialect, which is the most well-studied so far. A particularity of Romansh is the so-called "collective plural" to refer to a mass of things as a whole:Adjectives are declined according to gender and number. How practical is it, when one can learn the languages of both without effort?In response however, the editor of the newspaper added that:According to the testimony of experienced and vigilant language teachers, while the one who is born Romansh can easily learn to understand these languages and make himself understood in them, he has great difficulties in learning them properly, since precisely because of the similarity, he mixes them so easily with his own bastardized language.
In Sursilvan, this is A feature only found in Putèr and Vallader is the preposition of a direct object, when that direct object is a person or an animal, with No systematic synchronic description of Romansh vocabulary has been carried out so far.The influence of the languages spoken in Grisons before the arrival of the Romans (Raetic and Celtic) is most obvious in placenames, which are often pre-Roman. Today, this usage is limited to Surmiran as in The influence of Romansh on the local vernacular German has not been studied as thoroughly as vice versa. Speakers of Sursilvan and of the Ladin varieties Vallader and Putèr in particular, are usually unable to understand each other initially.In Switzerland, official language use is governed by the “territorial principle”: Cantonal law determines which of the four national languages enjoys official status in which part of the territory. The language is recognized as a minority language in many countries. Also known for their plays are Men Gaudenz and Tista Murk (1915–1992) from the Val Müstair and Carli Fry (1897–1956) from Surselva. The northern areas, called lower Raetia, became German-speaking by the 12th centuryIn addition, beginning around 1270 the German-speaking Walser began settling in sparsely or non-populated areas within the Romansh-speaking heartland. which has resulted in …
The only working language of the This means that any citizen of the canton may request service and official documents such as ballots in their language of choice, that all three language may be used in court, and that a member of the cantonal parliament is free to use any of the three languages.Cantonal law leaves it to the districts and municipalities to specify their own language of administration and schooling. pp. Andri Peer (1921–1985) from the Lower Engadine is considered one of the first modern Romansh writers, whose works introduced modern literary trends into Romansh. ), Akten des V. Rätoromanistischen Kolloquiums / Actas dal V. Colloqui retoromanistic. In the western areas, the Cadi and the Val Lumnezia, it is the language of a vast majority, with around 80% naming it as their language of best command, and it often being a daily language for virtually the entire population. Some linguists assume that the area was rapidly romanized following the Roman conquest, whereas others think that this process did not end until the 4th or 5th century AD, when more-thoroughly romanized Celts from farther north fled south to avoid invasions by Germanic tribes.At the time, Romansh was spoken over a much wider area, stretching north into the present-day Cantons of Glarus and St. Gallen to theWalensee in the northwest and Rüthi and the Rhine Valley in the northeast.