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Romansh (/ r oʊ ˈ m æ n ʃ, r oʊ ˈ m ɑː n ʃ / roh-MA(H)NSH; sometimes also spelled Romansch and Rumantsch) [note 1] is a Gallo-Romance and/or Rhaeto-Romance language spoken predominantly in the Swiss canton of the Grisons (Graubünden).
The Romance languages, also known as the Latin [2] or Neo-Latin [3] languages, are the languages that are directly descended from Vulgar Latin. [4] They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are:
In all of these, except for Flims, however, a majority of people reported using Romansh daily in the 2000 Swiss census, even if only a minority named it as their language of best command. In about half of the Sursilvan villages, Romansh is the language of best command of over 70% or 80%. The highest percentage is found in Vrin with over 95%. As ...
The Gallo-Romance languages are generally considered the most innovative (least conservative) among the Romance languages. Northern France, the medieval area of the langue d'oïl from which modern French developed, was the epicentre. Characteristic Gallo-Romance features generally developed the earliest, appear in their most extreme ...
Romansh was named by 5,497 people within the upper Engadine valley (30%) as a habitually spoken language in the census of 2000, which probably corresponds roughly to the total number of speakers. [3] The term is probably originally a nickname derived from put 'porridge', meaning 'porridge-eaters'.
Romance languages have a number of shared features across all languages: Romance languages are moderately inflecting, i.e. there is a moderately complex system of affixes (primarily suffixes) that are attached to word roots to convey grammatical information such as number, gender, person, tense, etc. Verbs have much more inflection than nouns.
In their eyes, Romansh was an obstacle to the Romansh people's economic and intellectual development. [9] In 1880, the Romansh-speaking area formed a single continuous geographical unit. But by the end of the century, the so-called "Central-Grisons language bridge" began to disappear. [10]
In the 16th century, the first Romansh Bible was made. [1] In 1560, Jachiam Tütschett Bifruns, one of the men of Romansh literature, translated the Bible into Romansh, L'g Nuof Sainc Testamaint da nos Signer Jesu Christ. In the 17th century, Romansh literature in Sursilvan, Sutsilvan and other dialects appeared.