In multilingual Switzerland, a dialect struggles
By John Tagliabue (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-11 09:09
 |
Large Medium Small |
CHUR, Switzerland - The people of this corner of Switzerland are arguing whether language is a matter of the heart or the pocketbook.
Depending on whom you talk to in the steep, alpine enclaves of Graubunden, otherwise known as Grisons, the easternmost wedge of the country, there is either strong support or bitter resistance to Romansh,
the local language. "When people talk about the death of Romansh," said Elisabeth Maranta, who for the last 18 years has run a Romansh bookshop, Il Palantin, which sells books in Romansh and in German,
"then I say that there are days when I only sell books in Romansh."
A native of Germany, she came to Chur 38 years ago with her husband, but does not speak Romansh. While she is an ardent champion of Romansh, she can be bleak about its future. Asked why most of the books in Romansh she sells are poetry, she muses: "When a patient is dying, he writes only poetry."
Romansh is the direct descendant of the Latin that was spoken in these mountain valleys at the height of the Roman empire, and shares the same Latin roots as French, Italian or Spanish.
In the 19th century, monks in the region developed a written language. The valleys produced their own writers in Romansh.
It was always a regional tongue, with the number of Romansh speakers probably peaking around 2.2 percent of the total Swiss population in the early 19th century; but then, of course, the population of Switzerland was only about 1.6 million people, a fraction of what it is today, when less than 1 percent of the population - about 60,000 people - speaks Romansh.
Only a few decades ago, Romansh was looked upon as the patois of poor country people; today it is experiencing a tenuous rebirth thanks to revival programs and government support. Switzerland declared
it an official language in 1996, though with limited status compared with the country's other official languages - German, French and Italian - and spends about $4 million a year to promote it.
Out in the village of Trun, up the Rhine Valley, Fritz Wyss is a fan of Romansh. "I see it as an advantage," said Mr. Wyss, 51, who runs a butcher shop in Trun, where almost 90 percent of the people speak Romansh and all his products are marked in German and Romansh.
In his offices as chief executive of Hamilton Bonaduz, the Swiss affiliate of an American company specializing in medical and research equipment, Andreas Wieland wishes he could bid goodbye to Romansh,
and for his purposes, Italian.
He was invited in August to a conference on the Romansh but declined to go, writing instead to the organizers:
"Romansh and Italian may have great value culturally and politically, but for our export economy they have no relevance and belong rather in the category of folklore."
The New York Times