Romansh people

The Graubünden novels or Romansh, often simply novels ( proper name Ruman Tschs ), are an Graubünden in the Swiss canton of living people that own Romance language, the Grisons Romansh or Romansch speaking.

The settlement area of this population is called Romansch Switzerland or in their own language as Romansh.

Dissemination and development

Approximately 0.48 percent (about 33'991 people ) of the Swiss population are counted for Romansh Switzerland. At the cantonal level only knows the Canton of Grisons Romansh as official language ( alongside German and Italian). Romansh is - increasingly displaced from the German language - despite supportive measures to maintain the language. The result at the community level is that affected communities switch from Romansh to German language area.

Language majority in the Grisons 2000

Actual distribution of the national languages ​​in Graubünden 2000

Situation of Romansh Switzerland

The Language Act of the Canton of Grisons of 19 October 2006 is trying to counteract the drop in the Romanche by a municipality is defined as long as monolingual, provided that at least 40 percent of its population are associated with the ancestral language group. This goes hand in hand with the fact that as long as a community is monolingual, the native language as the only (instructional ) language is adopted by the school and for public signage and official communications. If a municipality has a population of less than 40 though, but still up to 20 percent, it is considered bilingual and can use both languages ​​as language of instruction. Only when the rate of the population of indigenous linguistic group drops below 10 percent, the church is no longer required, the language in school to offer.