Romansh Language - Linguistic Classification

Linguistic Classification

Romansh is a Romance language descending from Vulgar Latin, the spoken language of the Roman Empire. Within the Romance languages, Romansh stands out through its peripheral location, which manifests itself through several archaic features. Another distinguishing feature is the centuries-long language contact with German, which is most noticeable in the vocabulary and to a lesser extent the syntax of Romansh. Romansh belongs to the Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages, which includes languages such as French, Occitan, and Lombard alongside Romansh. The main feature placing Romansh within the Gallo-Romance languages is the fronting of Latin /u/ to or as seen in Latin muru 'wall', which is mür or mir in Romansh. The main features distinguishing Romansh from the Italian language to the south are:

• Palatalization of Latin K and G in front of A, as in Latin cane 'dog', which is tgaun in Sursilvan, tgang in Surmiran, and chaun in Putèr and Vallader (the difference between and being purely orthographic). This sound change is partially absent in some varieties of Romansh however, especially in Sursilvan where it may have been reversed at some point: Sursilvan casa and Putèr chesa 'house'.
• Retention of word-final -s as in buns chavals 'good horses' as opposed to Italian buoni cavalli.
• Retention of L following /p b k g f/: Latin clavem 'key' > clav as opposed to Italian chiave.

Whether or not Romansh, Friulan and Ladin should be considered a separate "Rhaeto-Romance" subgroup within Gallo-Romance is an unresolved issue, known as the Questione ladina. Some linguists posit that these languages are descended from a common language, which was then fractured geographically through the spread of German and Italian. This position goes back to the Italian linguist Graziadio Ascoli who first made the claim in 1873. The other position is that any similarities between these three languages can be explained through their relative geographic isolation, which shielded them from linguistic changes, whereas the Gallo-Italic varieties of northern Italy were more open to linguistic influences from the south. Linguists who take this position often point out that the similarities between the languages are comparatively few. This position was first introduced by the Italian dialectologist Carlo Battisti. This linguistic dispute became politically relevant for the Italian irredentist movement. Italian nationalists interpreted Battisti's hypothesis as implying that Romansh, Friulan, and Ladin were not separate languages but rather Italian dialects. They used this as an argument to claim the territories where these languages were spoken for Italy. From a sociolinguistic perspective, this question is largely irrelevant, since the speakers of Romansh have always identified as speaking a language distinct from both Italian and other Romance varieties.