Romansh: Switzerland's Mountain Language 

Something too add that I think is very interesting: there has been an influx of portugese immigrants to Grisons, who mainly work in construction and the tourism sector. They, as it turns out, pick up rumansh relatively quickly, and gave the language a small „bump“ in recent years

My grandparents are native Sursilvan Romansch speakers. I’ve been with them to more distant parts of the country where they speak a different dialect and it’s crazy how different they can sound- so wild!! I totally support different regions sustaining their own dialect but I’d also love to see the language grow as a whole.

It sounds like a northern italian language, but spoken with a heavy german accent which makes it incomprehensible to a latin ear. The written form is much easier to understand. That's my take as an italian. Congratulations for your work.

Very nice video. As a rumantsch speaker, I can agree to all of what you said. I find it great covered my native language, because it's part of my identity. It's sad that this language is almost extinct but I and 50'000 others will keep fighting till the end :). Great work, you have a new subscriber.

When you talked about Venetian, I was moved. However me and some friends of mine are working on a standardization of the language and I hope that one day all Venetians will be able to use it as an official spoken language!

This is hands down the best and funniest linguistics-tube format. I'm Swiss and I enjoyed this a lot.

Wow! Thanks for sharing! My great grandfather came from the Romansh speaking regions of the Grisons. I think the fact that it has survived this long gives reason to not let it die. Even though I cannot speak it, I can speak German and a little French, and seem to understand a little of Romansh. I would love to study one day and even help keep it alive👍🏻

Hey man I am swiss and i speak Sursilvan :) I can tell, this video is so accurate and i like this video alot :) Keep up the work dude.

graziel per tia contribuziun... sursilvan here... we are loosing words and grammar every day, but such is the way of life... still a good and strong community though and a lots of interest and help from the outside... corona has made a lot of people move up into the mountains which is really revitalizing the region a bit 😊

As Native Austrian from Vorarlberg i really hope that this language will continue to exist in the future

i'm swiss (grew up in the canton of Aargau, deep in the swiss german speaking part of the country) and i learned none of this in school. all we were ever taught is that romansh... exists. so this was really interesting to watch! also i think it's fascinating that at 9:00, the speaker in that tv clip *sounds* like they're speaking swiss german. as in the pronounciation is similar, like an accent (which makes sense). just fascinating that there can be an accent of a dialect in another language altogether.

As a native "bargaiot" speaker (a lombard-romantsch dialect) I can confirm we are very pround in speaking our own dialect, I consider my dialect part of rumantsch as it's very similar to vallader and puter, much more so they are similar to sur- and sutsilvan Great video! You capture perfectly the language!

I'm french-speaking swiss and I really wished Rumantsch had more educational support outside its borders. One we could maybe use to communicate with each other better instead of English lol. But I admit that's impractical. Still, it needs more support

This channel is very high quality and does not get enough subscribers

The subjects and format of your videos are so good keep at it man your gonna be huge

Don't forget that the Italian language of Switzerland are Lombard dialects as in the adjacent Lombard provinces. So the Italian dialects are close to Romansh _ give me a couple of months and I'd be pretty fluent as I'm from an adjoing territory

Grazcha fich! Native speaker of Puter here 🙋🏼‍♀️ What a great researched video, loved it 🤍

ALSO important note, the reason why Swiss German (NOT Swiss High German) isn't unified into a single language is the exact same reason why Romansh struggles to have one standard. Each canton of Swiss (German) speaks their own variety, thus this emotional connection is very strong.

Yep, we do be speaking Romansh op in here. I'm actually doing my finals in Romansh this year so it's kinda cool to be part of such a tiny exclusive language. BTW, this is a great video, very thourougly researched. and pretty much sums up the situation well

I'm a romansh speaker and come from the ,,Engiadina,,. I'm speaking the puter and vallader, and I wouldn't say that we do not understand ourselves by Romansh. It gives difference between words but I would say that we can understand ourselves. It's really cool that you do also videos about languages who aren't really known. The pronunciation was not always right, but well done! Thank you for the video!

From a Swiss that is a language nerd, I'm very positively surprised by the quality (accuracy) of this video. Really, well done, thanks!

Love it, was just thinking the other day when you would make a new video. Always very educational.

Very good video! I love it. I didn't know a lot about the Romansh and you also give me another perspective about the standarization of languages that's useful for my own situation (I'm a speaker of Asturleonese). Good job!!

I did not expect to get this recommended, thank you for your work Grazia fetg!

As far as I know, the vallader dialect is spoken in daily life and is by far the dominant language in the region (lower Engadine). The problem they have is not the language not being passed on to the next generation, but people moving to bigger cities. The only somewhat bigger City in the grisons is Chur, which is german speaking. My guess is that the Surselva dialect has the same problem, while the remaining dialects are heavily in decline.

I know almost nothing about Romansch but I wonder why people resort to German to speak to people that don't use the same dialect (maybe low prestige?). This isn't always the case in minority languages, Irish native speakers (mostly) understand each other's dialects because they are exposed to enough dialect-diverse media to do so, so they speak their own Irish to each other and it's fine.

I was born to Piedmontese and Lombard parents and I fully understand those two languages in addition to Italian and French. Perhaps as a result of this, I find that I can understand the gist of what is being said when I read Romansh, but when I hear it being spoken it's more difficult because of what sounds like a strong German accent.

Excellent video! Can't wait to see more linguistics content from you, it looks like you're just starting your channel, but you already have better-quality content than linguistics channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Excited to see what's next!

Very cool video thanks for giving rumantsch a bit of exposure!! Also great pronounciation well done! Love from Grischun

My great grandma's native tongue was Arpitan, she learnt to properly speak French only past 18 years old. My grandma knew only a few sentences and expressions. My mom doesn't speak it at all. Crazy how fast a language can be lost. I really wish Arpitan had been more preserved but people back then really didn't care, my great grandma didn't care at all about "loosing" her native language because it was socially depreciated

founds this channel purely by chance via YT algorithm and binge watched all your videos, you've got a new subscriber, looking for to more language content :D

Great work! Good job on the research too! As far as I can tell everything correct (not saying an average Swiss from a different area is the expert ^^ - but found nothing that would be totally off). At the end wondered if you are Swiss or Liechtensteiner yourself... Cheers!

I'm happy to see people reporting on this shrinking language. And at least something is being done here to keep it alive. Not too long ago, a horror videogame was released that was entirely in Rumantsch (with subtitles). It's called "Mundaun" for those interested

I never thought Switzerland’s languages could be so complicated. Why does this hurt my brain

Great vid! One of my linguistics professors told us that the chair before her did research on Romansh (at least I think it was Romansh given that it was an underdocumented language in the Alps). Some of the speakers he worked with lived in such remote, mountainous areas that he had to ski to them, with all of his heavy recording equipment strapped to his back, this was like 20-30 years ago.

in vorarlberg (austria) there are still some Romansh speakers left, mainly in the montafon Valley

Кожная мова ў свеце - гэта як дыямант у скарбонцы нашага агульнага багацця. Няхай квітнее прыгожая рэтараманская мова! З любоўю і паразуменнем ад носьбіта іншай цікавай мовы - беларускай. ❤❤❤

In Norway, we're also struggling with the fact that everyone thinks we're speaking the same language but rather "struggle" with huge dialectal (rather linguistic) variaties. I actually sent you an email about it, Oscopo if you're more interested! Would love it if you peaked into it 😄. Realistic example of 2 languages; My own from "Klepp" and the one from "Oslo": Klepp: "Æg hette Ærling å sjæme ifrå Klepp. Kæ får någe språg snakke du? Om døu hæ lyst te å eda mad mæ'åkke?" Oslo: "Jæ heter Æ'ling og kommer fra Oshlo. Hvilke språk snakker'ru? Har'ru lyst til å spise mat me oss?" Æ = M(a)ster, Bl(a)st (American pronunciation) Å = Gr(o)wth, M(o)nkey (American pronunciation, "Ø" with British pronunciation)

Very interesting! I hope you do a Basque video, too. Your video made me curious!

Your videos are very interesting and exhaustive! I really hope to see more.

I love learning about obscure romance languages. Rumansch, Sardinian, Rhaeto Romance, Ladino, Ladin, Venetian, Friulian,

I wish they get the agreement to keep it alive and increase the numbers of Romansh speakers like Euskadi did.

It’s very interesting to receive such information about a European minority language. People forget we do have neglected languages worldwide. We boast about our many languages, but forget that languages (or the last speakers of it) are dying daily. Other languages are in the same situation as Romansh. Lack of educational material, brushed off as „dialects“, lack of standardisation or educational materials, difficult circumstances of reviving the language. I hope Romansh will not disappear and will receive the support it deserves to be maintained. Thank you for this video.

As a Basque I think that you're right, but with the small counter arguments that some dialects are facing extinction, and that it's generally better suited for formal as opposed to casual speach.

Omg I was talking about Romansh with a friend yesterday!! And now it appears in my recommended…

Just discovered your channel - great video, keep up the good work! Subbed.

when designing maps please think about color vision deficiency for your color palette. Up to 1 in 10 male viewers can be affected by CVD. I for example can't differentiate your romansch from the italian map color. Several solutions are available: you can use a CVD color palette, or even generate your own, you can use symbols additional to colors or you can use labels pointing to the region additionally to color. The video content itself is really cool.

Lovely video! I went to the area a few years ago to learn about the language, and this was a nice reminder of everything :)

I love your videos! I'm learning Irish due to family history and I live in Seattle. It's been really hard finding Irish speakers.

Truly educational. Fascinating video!

A similar situation exists with Cymraeg/Welsh. There are significant differences between Welsh spoken in North, Mid-Coastal, and Southern Wales. For writing, however, the differences are fewer and there has been much standardisation. Schools teach both a standardised, somewhat simplified Welsh, and older pupils who opt to take Welsh as a high school subject (as opposed to just as the medium by which everything is taught - as is the case for about 30 percent of schools nationally) also learn the more complicated classical form of Welsh, including Welsh poetic forms. Of course, with every school pupil in Wales being obliged to study Welsh for a minumum of three years, and with about a million people being at least somewhat fluent, of whom about half use it as their daily spoken tongue at home, Welsh has the advantages of scale which Romansch doesn't.

My recent dna test said much of my DNA is from this area of Switzerland 🇨🇭. I had never heard of this language before watching this video. Thanks.

0:02 I use so much that interactive map. It's really good to know places in distant parts of the world. If anyone is wondering it's the map of the WWF terrestrial ecoregions, and you have the interactive version if you search "2017 Ecoregions". Even if you are not very interested in Biology it's very useful for geography and history. Ever wondered what was the original natural landscape of your favorite culture or civilisation?

I gotta do some research now on the place of Romansch in the construction of Swiss national identity now cause that was so interesting to hear about (as well as everything else)! Do you have any further readings on this?

In Switzerland, they speak Swiss-German which is different from German. However, business people revert to German in official discussions. It's weird, but it's part of the culture.

You think you could do videos covering Occitan and Arpitan?

Very interesting video on the current situation of Romansh. Could you do a similar one on Lombard?

Im swiss (i speak german, english and a bit of french) and i have never really heard anyone speak romansh, but i really hope it gets more attention

Even you may not like this idea: but why won't they have a consolidated Romansh based on Surmiran (the more centrally-located of the idioms)? It may not be pleasant to every Romansh speaker, but I would be a model for a newly-unified Romansh language somehow different from the Rumantsch Grischun we know.

Fascinating thank you for doing this video.

Great video, the only thing I find an issue with is that I would distinguish between German used as an “official language” in Switzerland and the spoken Swiss-German which is its own language and very different from German.

YES YOU PICKED THE RIGHT SUPERMARKET CHAIN

I'm from the French speaking part of the country and I would have loved to learn more about Romansh in school. Preserving a language like that, the only real "Swiss" language, would be really cool.

Very, very well researched and explained. Thanks for putting in so much effort!

I'm hardly Italian but something about that flash of a future Greater Italy awoken an almost imperialistic nationalism in me

Do they have a strong Romanche/Rumantsch identity, or do they have several zonal identities? In the Basque country they both have a strong Basque identity and several local identifies, which may have helped them to accept better the Batua (unified language)

As a romansh speaker I have to correct you about romansh grischun. The problem is that there are almost 2 groups of romansh idioms which are veryyy different. A Vallader speaker has no trouble understanding puter, but begins to struggle understanding Sursilvan. Also the construction of the language is bad and artificial made by some german guy. great video btw

0:26 You missed a letter (u). It's Graubünden.

0:23 When you ask for Corwason to eat, but the waiter didn't understand you, so you keep changing your accent until he understand.

Bitte mach meh Videos! Si sind würkli super! Grüsse eines Schweizers 🇨🇭

Love this channel

It literally sounds like a mix between German and Italian- how crazy

Excellent, I learned a lot, interesting comparison to Welsh dialect differences

It seems to me that the most efficient way to keep a language alive is for it to be used in schools. Your example with the Basque is significant; if Romansch is only taught for a few years in primary school, and there exists no course in higher education in the language, it will have a hard time surviving.

Here's how I would go about solving the issue of Romansh and their standards. If we look at the case of Catalan, there are 2 written standards (Catalan and Valencian) and they are for the most part almost identical with some regional spellings and vocabs supported in one area. HOWEVER that doesn't stop people from using words that aren't "official" to the standards from Barcelona and Valencia respectively. The standard is used in official writing, but the variety in different ways to say a simple word such as: Nosaltres (we, standard) can also be Natros, Moatros etc. Even in the Balearic islands where they conserved an older form of Catalan can at least still communicate by using the standard Catalan but people will still switch to spoken Mallorquí, Menorquí etc.

I'm a native romansh speaker. Good Research! Well done. However, both videos you showed are actually romontsch sursilvan (the largest idiom) an not rumantsch grischun. Thank you for bringing attention to our beatiful language❤

Quite amazingly informative...

Excellent video. I, an Anglophone, live in a Romontsch village with my wife, who speaks Romontsch-Sursilvan. She is an "idiomist"; I, along with most of my Romontsch fellow citizens, am not. We get on well anyway. Two things you did not bring out in your commentary: 1. The 6 years schooling each Romontsch gets is in their own idiom, not in Romontsch-Grischun (RG). This means they all write their idiom, not only speak it. 2. RG was inspired by the language situation in German-speaking Switzerland. There are dozens of Swiss dialects, some of them much less mutually intelligible than the Romontsch idioms. None are written; the Swiss-Germans write in "book German", i.e. standard written German, which is a foreign language to them. The Romontsch are ahead of them there. As you say, each Romontsch idiom is written. And if you read one, you can read the others, and RG. I also think you exaggerate the differences between the idioms. I speak Sursilvan, and I can communicate in the other idioms pretty well. My biggest problem (also in Sursilvan) is that if I make a tiny mistake (common) my interlocutor will switch to German, to "help" me. Alas, this doesn't help, as my knowledge of German is far below Romontsch.

Greetings from Pakistan which has at least 74 languages. In my city we have 4 - Punjabi, Pashto, Potwari and Urdu. Everyone speaks 3 languages at least. 'Community languages' are for people of that community and often they don't like others knowing it. When they speak with others they usually do so in Urdu the national language. Most people are illiterate in their own mother tongue Community language and just read and write in Urdu or English. Maybe Romansch speakers are like that - maybe they don't actually want or expect outsiders to know their language and like to keep it for themselves.

Interesting. It is a quite common assumption that Romanians are descending from a population of mountain dwellers, of sheppards. Southern Romania, though mostly a plane, is called Muntenia, meaning the mountain country, because its ancestors used to be mountain dwellers. Throughout the Balkans there is a strong association between Latinity and mountain dwelling. I did not know the Romansh were also mountain dwellers. I suspect this is more than a coincidence.

You should do a video on Mexican languages, it's very interesting seeing the survival of many indigenous languages in today's age.

I bought a Romansch dictionary and phrase book and as a French speaker I find it very interesting and fairly easy. I wonder, however, if it is RG or a particular dialect. It doesn't say in the book.

00:04:57 is actualy Sursilvan and not Rumantsch Grischun … even though my children pretend it sometimes is Sursilvan "enriched" with Rumantsch Grischun. Cheers and thank you for the video. @rtrfilms880

thank you for the video! İ understand Romanian, French, Spanish, and to a large extent Valencian, Portuguese (especially when it's written) and İtalian (more when it's spoken). and yet Romansh is like a whole different world. İ've listened to it several times and İ'm ashamed to admit that İ barely understood anything. İ'm not sure why.

Are you my friend? And my boyfriend's friend? We are Irish-Swiss-Italian and we stumbled across your channel. We're suspicious that your videos may be directly addressed to us...

Good video! Sadly, it seems that "Regio-nationalism" plays a large role in determining whether a smaller language will survive when surrounded by larger neighbors. The growth of both Basque and Catalan in Spain can be partly explained by (sometimes violent) opposition to what they perceive to be Spanish hegemony.* An even more recent example is the growth of Ukrainian, displacing Russian in parts of Ukraine. Because Switzerland is already a confederation, there is no central hegemonic authority to oppose. Thus, ironically, lacking a "casus belli," the minor language just peacefully dies out. And in Ireland, Gaelic is not opposed to the power. It IS the power, but as you mentioned, that's no guarantee for the survival of the language. * Although there was a brief wave of Breton nationalism in France (they bombed Versailles in 1978), France threw the region a few bones (like having all local signs in Breton as well as French), but it never caught on as a regional mass movement (like Catalunya); and consequently, Breton is slowly dying out.

as a swiss i just subbed

3 times more people (90k) have now seen this video than actually speak Romansh (30k)

Make a video about the aromanian language in Greece

It was interesting to see Liechtenstein as part of the historically spoken area...

2:03 This looks badass, not gonna lie

Where did you get that map at 0:51 (Romance languages) from? An are there similar maps for other language families?

As someone from the Saxon part of the Netherlands I know the struggle, Low Saxon doesn't have a standard and even "dialects" have dialects. Groningers and Drenths will say that they speak separate dialects and that these are not related or are just "bad Dutch".

I'm swiss and I'd love to learn some Romansh language. Is there something that can be done to help the language in it's battle?

My grandmother was born ( 1878 ) in Kloster, her language was romansh.

I find this very interesting. My family spoke Nones. We have no recognition for our language and it is slowly dying.

3:56 actually there is a standard written version of Sicilian, created by Cademia Siciliana. Unfortunately Sicilian is not recognised by the government and most people don't know the existence of the standard orthography...

I think you could talk about the bavarian language as its quite interesting, in a strict linguistic sense its not even a language or a dialect, technically its a creole and evolved differently as languages normally form, while some languages take a thousand years to fully for maway from another language, be it through isolation or assimilation, bavarian in its early form only took ~200-300 years to go from non existant to being marked on a map, before the roman empire the region today was very sparsely inhabited by only a few celtic and germanic tribes, but with the roman empire many settlers came into the place, often from many different places of the roman empire, be it from northern italy or as far as the levant, with the warlike and slave nature of the romans slaves from the empire itself and regions beyond like mesopotamia came int othe region, mainly due to the rhine legions. after the fall of the Limes many germanic tribes from outside of the empire crossed inside and settled there as well, later even some rus' came by and settled around the Isar river, all of those peoples and languages living in the same small space essentially mixed togetehr into early bavarian

Interesting video.

Nice video! :D