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Rhaeto-Romance languages | ||
Tags: Romance Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Sudaca1 Newbie Peru Joined 6228 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Speaks: Spanish* Studies: English | Message 1 of 9 23 May 2008 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
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Could Friulian, Ladin and Romansh be considered a same language?
If so, is there any attempt to unifiy them? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6844 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes  Studies: Korean | Message 2 of 9 30 May 2008 at 12:55pm | IP Logged |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhaeto-Romance_languages
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| Makrasiroutioun Quadrilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Canada infowars.com Joined 6110 days ago 210 posts - 236 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Armenian*, Romanian*, Latin, German, Italian Studies: Dutch, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 9 30 May 2008 at 4:38pm | IP Logged |
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One thing's for sure... most of the Rhaeto-Romance varieties are endangered and some are predicted to undergo linguicide.
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| Tigresuisse Triglot Senior Member SwitzerlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6009 days ago 182 posts - 180 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 9 02 July 2008 at 6:29am | IP Logged |
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What I know for sure is that the Romansh spoken in Switzerland is not that endangered as it is one of four official languages spoken in Switzerland.
And we also have TV programs, newspaper and so on in Romansh. I can't say for the others, but I don't think there is any attempt to unify the Swiss Romansh to other Rhaeto-Romance languages ... I would not define them as one language, even if they probably have a common root ... they are all separated by the nation they do belong to ... and mountains !!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Autarkis Triglot Groupie Switzerland twitter.com/Autarkis Joined 5956 days ago 95 posts - 106 votes 4 sounds Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 5 of 9 11 August 2008 at 2:33pm | IP Logged |
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Well, if I may expand upon Tigresuisse's points...
In my opinion, Romansh is very endangered, and this opinion stems from the belief that state funding cannot change people's minds. Our country puts quite a monetary effort into the preservation of Romansh, but the mountain villages' populations continue to shrink. Many are becoming mere tourist villages, nearly empty in summer. Now, there are new laws that intend to prevent this, but the young people will still go to the big cities, like Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Berne, to study. And once they get their diploma, will they return to the mountains? I don't think so. It's good that our country doesn't let Romansh die easily, that it tries to preserve and research whatever possible about it. But I think, ultimately, sadly, the language is doomed. On the topic at hand ... I think, consolidating languages is the same thing as letting them all die and create a new one, all be it with the advantage that speakers of the formerly autonomous languages will have an easier time learning it. From that point of view, I think it's a good thing that they don't try to do this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6707 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 9 12 August 2008 at 4:31am | IP Logged |
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I have visited Graubünden twice without hearing a word of Romansh (which in this context probably would mean the Engadin dialect). However I have a tape with a TV program where there are some sentences in Romansh, and I even own a couple of (thin) books in this language. Besides I had access to one shelf meter of thick dusty tomes called something like "Annales Rhaeto-Romauntsch" while I was studying at the Institute of Romance languages in Århus way back in the seventies.
My lack of success in finding speakers of this language may explained if they all live in the countryside while I'm roaming the towns. However my impression is that Romansh is as inconspicuous as Platt in Northern Germany and French in Louisiana. And being inconspicuous is a step in the direction of becoming extinct. As for the general question: is Romansh a language? I had never doubted that it was until I saw that ProfArguelles had the opposite view. Since then I have spent some time reading in and about the dialects of Northern Italy, and my current position on this matter is that there is a dialect continuum from 'true' Italian through the 'true' Northern Italian dialects to the Romansch dialects, and that the dividing lines from a purely linguistical point of view are somewhat arbitrary. It belongs to the tale that the Northern Italian dialects in some respects are closer to the occitan dialects of Southern France than to 'proper' Italian from the Italian Peninsula. However nowadays the standardized Italian language has definitely pushed the Northern Italian dialects - which left to their own devices might have coalesced into a language - into the role as mere dialects of Italian. And Romansch is then roughly speaking constituted by the leftovers from this process. Unfortunately I haven't spent much time comparing Engadinish, Friulish and Ladin so I'm not qualified to decide whether they could be defined as languages in their own right, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary the whole thing looks to me as an example of a heterogenous language, i.e. a language that never developed a unified standard form. As far as I know this is also the case of Basque and (until recently) Sardinian. Edited by Iversen on 12 August 2008 at 6:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Autarkis Triglot Groupie Switzerland twitter.com/Autarkis Joined 5956 days ago 95 posts - 106 votes 4 sounds Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 7 of 9 12 August 2008 at 5:00am | IP Logged |
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Well, if I remember correctly, Romansh is supposed to be a distinct language instead of a continuum from Italian because it contains many original Raetic (a celtic dialect) words. However, I myself don't speak Romansh.
My understanding is that many people don't talk Romansh with each other even if they know they both are able to. As to why that is ... maybe they just lack a lot of technical terms. I remember that Microsoft was forced to create a Romansh version of Microsoft Windows because some law said that they couldn't leave an official language out, because it would leave some Swiss citizens at a disadvantage. In this process, many Romansh words were invented, like "button", "double click" and such. I don't know how much these have indeed enhanced daily use of Romansh, as was hoped for. Considering TV, you can watch the official Romansh news magazine on Swiss TV over the Internet. (I don't know if any nation's IPs are being blocked however.) It's on www.sf.tv , on Sunday 17. August 17:30 Swiss time (no pun intended - that's GMT-1 ). Swiss television link 1 person has voted this message useful |
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