ayearinlanguage: A Year in Language, Day 17: Romansh Romansh is a Romance language, I.e. A descendan
ayearinlanguage: A Year in Language, Day 17: Romansh Romansh is a Romance language, I.e. A descendant of Latin, spoken primarily in Switzerland. It is a minority language, least spoken of all Switzerland’s four national languages (competing with German, Italian, and French) and only the 11th most spoken language in the country. The exact placement of Romansh in the Indo-European family tree is difficult partially due to a high level of influence by other neighboring languages, thought it is definitely in the Gallo-Romance stem alongside French. Like French, Romansh has had a heavy Germanic influence and notably includes “rounded front vowels”. In linguistic terminology vowels are based on the location at which the tongue most restricts the airflow, both in a vertical (high or low) and horizontal (front or back) dimension, as well as the rounding of the lips. Typically back vowels are more commonly rounded (u, o) and front vowels are not (i, e). However most Germanic languages, English being an exception, have rounded front vowels due to a historic process called “umlaut”. Romansh likely inherited these sounds due to contact, or at least through a parallel historic sound change. -- source link