The Swiss government spends about 7.6 million CHF annually to promote and preserve Romansh. You might think that would be the end of Romansh, but the Swiss are proud of their culture and in 1938 more than 90% of the country voted to make Romansh an official national language. Today German is the prominent language in Graubünden. More and more Germans came to the area, and by the 19th Century, the canton encouraged its Romansh residents to learn German. This lack of a uniform standard hindered Romansh’s ability to grow the way German or French did in the country. The leagues used German as their primary language, and because local villages were isolated in the mountainous area’s 150 valleys, Romansh fragmented into five somewhat different dialects, each with its own written language. 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. Romansh is the result of the combination of the Vulgar Latin spoken by soldiers and colonists, and Rhaetian, the language of the native people. Romansh is believed to have originated around 15BC when the Romans conquered Rhaetia, which is now Graubünden. The mysterious origins of Europe’s oldest language.The invisible lines through Switzerland.
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