Romansh Language
Romansh (also spelled Romansch, Rumants(c)h, or Romanche; Romansh: rumantsch/ rumauntsch/ romontsch/rumà ntsch; German: Rätoromanisch; Italian: Romancio) is a Rhaeto-Romance language descended from the Vulgar Latin spoken by the Roman era occupiers of the region. It is closely related to French, Occitan, and Lombard, as well as the other Romance languages to a lesser extent. Romansh is one of the four national languages of Switzerland, along with German, French and Italian.
In the 2000 Swiss census, 35,095 people (of which 27,038 in the canton of Grisons) indicated Romansh as the language of "best command", and 61,815 also as a "regularly spoken" language. Spoken by around 0.9% of Switzerland's 7.7 million inhabitants, Romansh is Switzerland's least-used national language in terms of number of speakers and the tenth most spoken language in Switzerland overall.
Read more about Romansh Language: Linguistic Classification, Geographic Distribution, Dialects, Official Status in Switzerland and Language Politics, Romansh Literature and Music, Romansh in The Media, Sample Text
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The reader uses his eyes as well as or instead of his ears and is in every way encouraged to take a more abstract view of the language he sees. The written or printed sentence lends itself to structural analysis as the spoken does not because the reader’s eye can play back and forth over the words, giving him time to divide the sentence into visually appreciated parts and to reflect on the grammatical function.”
—J. David Bolter (b. 1951)