[BRIEF NOTE] The last gasp of Romansh?

[rfmcdonald]

Yesterday's post about the push by German conservatives to make the German language Germany's official language touches on the interesting subject of language conflict and the different kinds--and realities--of threats to a spoken language that members of different language communities can perceive. While the German language, owing in part to the depletion of mother-tongue speakers of German outside of the German-speaking states part, in part because of the language's negative associations with Imperial and especially Nazi Germany, might no longer be a plausible contender with English as a vehicular language in Europe, it's still the official language of three very wealthy countries with a combined population of one hundred million. German might not travel well, but by many of the same standards Japanese doesn't either, but who's afraid that Japanese will become extinct?

Inside German-speaking Europe, however, there are two small language minorities whose languages--with their associated cultures--are facing existential threats. I've blogged in the past about the Sorbs, a Slavic people living in the eastern German region of Lusatia who are facing a variety of economic and social pressures making the preservation of Sorb into the 22nd century. The other threatened language is Romansh, a Romance language spoken in the Swiss Alps and that, as Qatar's The Peninsula reports, isn't faring well at all.

Schoolteacher Andrea Urech admits that he sometimes feels very lonely in his fight to keep alive the Romansh language spoken by less than one percent of people in Switzerland.

"I have written letters to all the hotels here offering my services to translate documents into Romansch, but I didn't get one single answer," he said.

Depending on who you talk to in eastern Switzerland's Graubuenden canton where most Romansh speakers are found, there is either fervent support or strong resistance to the language spoken by only 60,000 people across the country.

For every Urech who says "gea" to Romansh, there is someone else who says "na" or has an anecdote about how Romansh was being saved at an economic cost to the region.

The head of Graubuenden canton�s tourism and economic bureau, Eugen Arpagaus, has one such example of an employee who quit because the town where he lives switched from German to Romansh language teaching in school.

"He did not want his children to be taught in Romansh, so he left and I had to find someone else to replace him. We are losing talent because of this.

"Theirs (Romansh proponents\) is a romantic view. In reality, the language is a real handicap," he said.

A board member of Engadin St Moritz region's mountain rail, Dieter Bogner, pointed to an example of a Romansh-speaking employee who never fails to make mistakes when writing German even though the latter is the official language at work.

"Romansh speakers may tell you it is not a problem, but it is a problem. I receive CVs sometimes from Romansh speakers who just cannot write in German," said Bogner, highlighting the fact that much of Switzerland's industrial powerhouses are concentrated in German-speaking regions Zurich and Basel.

Indeed, the Romance language that shares the same Latin roots as French, Italian or Portuguese sparks very different responses here.

First developed from a fusion of vulgar Latin spoken by Roman conquerors and local languages in 15 BC, Romansh developed into a written language in the 16th and 17th centuries.

It became an official language in Switzerland only in 1996, but with limited status compared to German, French and Italian.

The government now spends about four million Swiss francs (2.5m euros, $3.3m) a year to promote the language, which is printed on bank notes and passports, but regulations do not require official documents to be translated into the language.

More often than not, Romansh is invisible in a country dominated by German and French speakers.

Even in Samedan, a town which was traditionally Romansh, inhabitants now speak German in the streets, the town's vice-mayor Otto Morell said over lunch at a restaurant where the menu was printed in German.

"In this room, I speak Romansh only to them," he said, pointing to Urech and the headmaster of the local school Robert Cantieni.

The encroachment of the German language in Samedan meant that by 2000, those who cited Romansh as their "best known language" had tumbled to 17 percent from some 33 percent in 1960.

Alarmed by the trend, Urech and other teachers at the local school reacted.

Their efforts led to Samedan adopting a local constitution that recognises both Romansh and German as official languages in the community in 2004.

The same article also recognised Romansh and German as teaching languages in the classroom.

As a result, classes are now taught in both Romansh and German for the first two years, and in one or the other language in the following years.

Despite the small victory for the language, Romansh speakers are, among themselves, locked in bitter discord over which of the five main so-called idioms of Romansh should be taught in school.

Urs Cadruvi, Secretary General of Lia Rumantscha, an organisation charged with promoting the language, is pushing for a 'standard' version of written Romansh, known as Rumantsch Grischun, to be rolled out across primary schools in the canton by 2010.

But Samedan's school is among those that insist on teaching their own local type of Romansh known as Puter.

Lia Rumantscha argues that the language stands a better chance of survival if speakers rally behind one version rather than insisting on five different strains.

"It's a very, very emotional issue," said Cadruvi.

I'm particularly struck by the ongoing competition between speakers of each of the five Romansh dialects, with each other and with the standardized form of Romansh: This does not seem like the sort of struggle that would help an endangered language community.