Where is romansh spoken in switzerland

Romansh is the result of the combination of the Vulgar Latin spoken by soldiers and colonists, and Rhaetian, the language of the native people. This new hybrid language became the primary language of the area until the 15th Century, when the canton first came together in a loose confederation known as the Free State of the Three Leagues.

More and more Germans came to the area, and by the 19th Century, the canton encouraged its Romansh residents to learn German. The Swiss government spends about 7. When the world loses a language, as it does every two weeks , we collectively lose the knowledge from past generations. The dialects are divided into Rhine more German influenced , and Engadine more Italian influenced.

Sursilvan: The most common of the dialects is found in the Surselva area of the Vorderrhein Valley. Sutsilvan: Only a small percentage of the 1, people in the Hinterrhein Valley still speak their dialect of Romansh. The influence of English as a business, internet and pop music language has detracted from Romansh among the younger generation especially.

The use of Romansh is on the decline. Measures of cantonal support, in particular the enactment of laws, have been slow to materialize. However, the formal framework for support is now in place and considerable efforts are being made to keep the language alive. It is compulsory in many local primary and secondary schools and in teacher training, but the situation is complicated by the fact that Romansh has several dialects which are distinct enough from each other almost to constitute separate languages.

Romansh is taught in three universities, Friburg , Zurich and Geneva. The Lia Rumanscha established a school at Cuira in and now also has libraries, runs courses, provides a translation service and publishes books in the three main dialects of Romansh. There is a daily newspaper published in Romansh, La Quotidiana , and a youth magazine, Punts. There is a Romansh news agency, the Agentura da Novitads Rumantscha.

Although in recent years there has been official recognition and promotion of Romansh as a national language, there are still concerns over its further decline. The sustainability of Romansh has been under threat due to the continued emigration of many young people for education and employment away from rural areas where it is more widely spoken.

Those who emigrate may move to areas where Swiss- German is the dominant language thereby reducing their everyday use of Romansh. There are some concerns over the use of the official version of the Romansh language by government and written publications. Rumantsch Grischun has been taught in some schools rather than regional dialects of Romansh. However, many Romansh oppose the use of Rumantsch Grischun , instead promoting traditional regional varieties of Romansh with language provision in schools.

Despite this, Rumantsch Grischun is still used by govern men t and canton s for official communications. Despite this worrying global situation, we reaffirm our commitment to safeguarding the rights of minority and indigenous communities and implementing indivisible human rights for all.

Sign up to Minority rights Group International's newsletter to stay up to date with the latest news and publications. Since August, MRG has been assisting Afghan minority activists and staff from our partner organizations as their lives and their work came under threat with the return of the Taliban.

We need your help. For the last three years, we at MRG have run projects promoting freedom of religion and belief across Asia. In Afghanistan we have fostered strong partnerships with amazing local organizations representing ethnic and religious minorities. They were doing outstanding work, educating minority community members about their rights, collecting evidence of discrimination and human rights abuses, and carrying out advocacy.

Not all have been able to flee. Many had no option but to go into hiding. Some did not have a valid passport. Activists can no longer carry out the work they had embarked on. They can no longer draw a salary, which means they cannot feed their families. With a season of failed crops and a cold winter ahead, the future is bleak for too many.

We refuse to leave Afghanistan behind. We are asking you today to stand by us as we stand by them. We will also use your donations to support our Afghan partners to pay their staff until they can regroup and make new plans, to use their networks to gather and send out information when it is safe to do so, and to seek passports and travel options for those who are most vulnerable and who have no option but to flee to safety.

Azadeh worked for a global organization offering family planning services. Standing for everything the Taliban systematically reject, Azadeh had no option but to flee to Pakistan. MRG is working with our partners in Pakistan to support many brave Afghans who have escaped Afghanistan because of their humanitarian or human rights work or their faith. They are now in various secure locations established by our local partners on the ground in Pakistan. Although they are safer in Pakistan than Afghanistan, Hazara Shia and other religious minorities are also persecuted there.

We need your help, to support those who put their lives on the line for basic human rights principles we all believe in: equality, mutual respect, and freedom of belief and expression. The situation on the ground changes daily as more people arrive and some leave. Aluminium mining in Baphlimali, India, has caused environment devastation and has wrecked the lifestyle of thousands of Adivasis.

For centuries, Adivasi communities like the Paraja, Jhodia, Penga and Kondh have been living amidst the Baphlimali foothills. For generations they have lived in harmony with nature. They lived through rain fed subsistence agriculture of millet, cereals, pulses, rice and collection of non-timber forest produce, e. With widespread mining activities and linked deforestation, they have lost access to forest products and to the much needed pasture land in the vicinity of their villages.

Your help will mean that MRG can support communities like these to help decision makers listen better to get priorities right for local people and help them to protect their environment and restore what has been damaged. The above picture is of a tribal woman forcibly displaced from her home and land by District Forest Officers in the district of Ganjam, Odisha.

Her cashew plantation burned in the name of protection of forests. Please note that the picture is to illustrate the story and is not from Baphlimali. Esther is a member of the indigenous Ogiek community living in the Mau Forest in Kenya.

Her family lives in one of the most isolated and inaccessible parts of the forest, with no roads, no health facilities and no government social infrastructure. The Ogiek were evicted from some forest areas, which have since been logged. The Ogiek consider it essential to preserve their forest home; others are content to use it to make money in the short term. Esther has a year-old daughter living with a physical disability who has never attended basic school, as it is over 12 kilometres away.

Young children living in these areas face challenges such as long distances to school, fears of assault by wild animals and dangers from people they may encounter on the journey. Because the Ogiek have no legally recognised land rights, despite hundreds of years of residence in this forest, the government is refusing to provide social services or public facilities in the area.

Ensuring that the Ogiek can access health services and education is essential and will mean that they can continue living on their land, protecting and conserving the environment there.

We are also advocating for equity in access to education and health by supporting OPDP to ensure that budgets for services are allocated fairly and are used well. The consequence of this wealth is that successive governments — colonial and post-colonial — have seen greater value in the land than the people. According to a study by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office , 0. In other words, the proportion of people who speak Romansh has fallen by half over the past century!

Romansh speakers are unique in that they are all bilingual, and they also speak another national language. Where does Romansh come from? It is a Romance language, like Italian, French and Catalan. In 15 B. After the city of Chur burned down in , it started to become Germanised under the influence of the German-speaking workmen involved in the city's reconstruction and the Romansch-speaking community lost its linguistic and cultural centre.

Clearly, linguistic competition between Germanic and Romance languages in the region is nothing new! Most linguists divide Romansh into five, mostly spoken, varieties: Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Puter and Vallader. They all exist in the spoken and written form, have a literary tradition going back years, and have their own grammar and dictionaries. This diversity owes to the fragmentation of communities in a region famous for its valleys. A single cultural centre has not emerged, and the five officially recognised varieties are considered equal.

This diversity was a problem when Romansh became an official language.