Talk:Romansh language/Archive 2

Recent changes plus orthography issues
Allegra! This page is a huge improvement from the last time I saw it, so congratulations to whoever did such a major makeover.

I have just made some edits which I should explain. I'm relatively new to editing, and am happy to learn if I'm not doing it right. Several of the amendments are minor tidy-ups etc., but the following are more major: I've added the Sutsilvan name for Romansh in the intro, to match up with the info-box. I've changed 'Grisons' to 'Graubünden' for Wikipedia consistency, particularly following the debates on the Graubünden page where it was decided to use that form in English articles. I can't say I'm particularly invested either way, but it seems sensible to be consistent. I've added [ç] to the phonology table. I think that this is a palatal fricative, but I'm happy to be corrected on this one, as I am not trained in linguistics. As far as I am aware, this is only found in Puter, in words with word-final -ih, such as amih, inimih, cuvih, chastih etc. Unfortunately my footnote for this has ended up in the main footnotes, not in the footnotes to the table, and I don't know how to amend this. Under morphology I've added a sentence re t-v polite forms in Puter and Vallader. Under syntax I've amended the reference to the use of 'a' before direct objects in Puter and Vallader, as this is used only where the direct object is a person or an animal. Under vocabulary, I've changed Puter "cumanzar" to "cumanzer" ("cumanzar" is Vallader). Under Romansh literature and music, I've added a bit about Romansh opera.

I'm a bit confused about the reference to Maurus Carnot (1865-1935) growing up in Samnaun but not speaking the Romansh dialect of his hometown, as I thought Samnaun had long been germanised (or bavarianised) by that time. I haven't made any amendments to that though in case I've got the wrong end of the stick.

I think some changes need to be made to the orthography section, however, but I'm not comfortable being bold and making changes immediately. The statement that k is only used in words borrowed from foreign languages is incorrect as far as Puter and Vallader are concerned. Although k is only used in the initial position for words borrowed from foreign languages, k is in longstanding use for native words where a hard c needs to be maintained when a word changes form. This would be the case with feminine or diminutive forms of nouns with last-syllable c - for example, il duca, la dukessa (p&v) (duke, duchess), ün toc, ün tockin (v) (a piece/ a little piece). In verbs, k occurs fairly regularly in both Puter and Vallader depending on the conjugation - tocker, eu toc, schlockiar, els schloccajan, francar, eu frankess (simple past), tschunker, eu tschunc, etc.

The orthography-pronunciation tables are quite misleading as far as Puter and Vallader are concerned, particularly Puter. I haven't done anything about this as a)my IPA knowledge is limited and b) it may just be a question of stating that these tables refer only to Sursilvan (but as my knowledge of the Sursilvan, Sutsilvan and Surmiran orthography-pronunciation relationships is not great, I don't know if that's true or not). Examples of Puter and Vallader issues are that ch is palatalised before all vowels; g is 'soft' (please excuse my non-technical vocubulary!) before ö and ü as well as e and i; final g is generally pronounced in the same way as 'ch'; n in final syllables in Puter is pronounced as m (bun=bum, buna=buma etc,) except when preceded by i, when it is pronounced ign, chesarin=chesarign, chesarina=chesarigna; Puter au is pronounced e (or German ä) before n, so that maun is pronounced mem, etc. The s-ch cluster could also be described. I think this needs someone with more IPA knowledge than me to deal with, or else a statement that the information only relates to X idiom(s).

I think the sentence under Orthography about Romansh borrowing from German could probably deleted. Using "Rumantsch" as an example of sch, rather than tsch seems odd, the reference to Italian sc seems very odd without reference to following vowels, and the reference to ö and ü is odd without reference at that point to their use being restricted to Puter and Vallader when the tables around it don't really deal with P&V. If no-one objects I might just delete it (I suspect it's a hangover from the old article).

I would also suggest just deleting the paragraph under "Standardisation" about orthography. "Odd-looking" spellings is a strange way to put it - odd-looking to whom? tg is certainly an odd-looking spelling for Puter and Vallader readers, but that didn't stop it becoming standard in RG. As for the reference to K being "a grapheme unfit for a Romance language such as Romansh" - as mentioned above, try telling that to someone in the Engadine! And and are not pronounced  and  in Puter and Vallader. Again I suspect this is a hangover from the old article. I am reluctant to delete the paragraph without a replacement (I don't want to be accused of vandalism!) but I think this para is so confused/confusing it would be better off deleted.

Just out of interest, why are we using Putèr in English, when the accent isn't there in Romansh, Puter or otherwise, and the grave accent isn't a normal English feature? It doesn't particularly offend me, but it seems odd to introduce a non-native English accent to a word where it doesn't occur in the native language. Is it just a help for pronunciation?

Mohntorte (talk) 05:33, 23 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm glad someone else is also taking an interest in this article! I'm still in the process of adding things based on the article I've written on the Alemannic Wikipedia. It's good that someone is bringing some knowledge of Ladin into the article, since I don't know very much about those varieties and I haven't yet found a concise overview about them.
 * Personally, I would prefer to use "Grisons" rather than "Graubünden" throughout, for the simple reason that it's a word English speakers will readily be able to pronounce, in contrast to "Graubünden". I don't think the title of the Graubünden page really matters for use in other articles, since as far as I know editors are free to choose among possible variants.
 * The "Orthography" and "Standardisation" sections are indeed relics from the old version of the article and should definitely be redone. The orthography section is a tricky one though because of the variation between the different Romansh varieties. The section on standardization contains false statements from start to finish, I'll probably just replace it with a completely new one about the whole RG issue. In addition to your remarks, Rumantsch Grischun isn't just a new "spelling" nor do I think it's very accurate to call it the standardized language since the five dialects are also standardized in their written form. Even weirder is the phrase "nationally standardised".
 * The reference to Maurus Carnot could be clearer I guess. Basically, Samnaun was still partially Romansh-speaking by the time he was born (coincidentally, the last speaker there died the same year as Carnot), but Bavarian had already gained the upper hand, so Carnot grew up only speaking Bavarian, something he reportedly regretted (I would guess he probably had some passive knowledge though).
 * I'm a bit confused about "Putèr" with the accent not being used in Putèr itself. I'm pretty sure the dictionary I used to look up the words I had a Putèr speaker record used the accent, but I could be wrong...--Terfili (talk) 07:59, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Terfili - so you're the one responsible for the huge improvement! Congratulations! I was very excited when I revisited the page the other day. Thanks for the information re Samnaun and Carnot, which is fascinating - I thought that Romansh had completely died out there long before that. I don't think the Carnot section needs to be changed. Re Puter - I will take back (marginally!) what I said about Puter not having a grave accent in Romansh - it does have a grave accent in Sutsilvan, but not in the other idioms, and certainly not in Puter itself. I've just checked the Gion Tscharner Puter dictionary to see if there has been a sneaky spelling reform which passed me by, but it's still Puter. I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work when you get time, Best wishes, 101.161.255.245 (talk) 09:05, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Oops, forgot to log in - still getting the hang of editing. That last one was from me. Mohntorte (talk) 09:08, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * In the mean time, if you want to know more about the language shift in Samnaun, you can check out the article als:Samnaun if you can read Alemannic, or the partial translation someone has done into Rumantsch Grischun rm:Samignun. --Terfili (talk) 07:59, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Name of the canton
We should be calling the canton Graubünden for the simple reason that it's the name of its Wikipedia article as well (plus the most common name). Jpatokal (talk) 02:00, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I disagree. Both Grisons and Graubünden are acceptable variants in English and when I revamped this article I purposely chose one variant over the other. Looking at the talkpage of the article on the canton shows that there is no clear consensus on this and there are compelling arguments for either variant. In the absence of clear usage in English, editors should be free to choose either Grisons or Graubünden, as long as usage is consistent within an article. Cheers, --Terfili (talk) 14:22, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Grisons is the name of the canton in French, which isn't widely spoken there. You should call the canton Graubünden. This isn't something you should choose arbitrarily based on your personal taste. Unless, of course, you are from Genf or Mailand.
 * This discussion is quiescent, but I just checked The New York Times files (back issues), and Grisons was used 210 times, vs. 45 for Graubunden. The Guardian, on the other hand, was evenly split — 45 to 45. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 23:46, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Searching for the frequency of "Grisons" versus "Graubünden/Graubunden" in English-language books using Google Ngram also shows "Grisons" being more common: . Choosing "Graubünden" over "Grisons" is just as must personal preference as vice versa. As for the argument that "Grisons" is the French name, which is not spoken in the canton: even though the term "Grisons" comes from French, it is established as one variant in English, so the origin of the word is irrelevant. A number of Swiss places have alternative/more common names in English derived from French, such as Lucerne or Berne, as do other European cities such as Cologne or Munich. Further evidence that both are acceptable variants in English is that the official English-language website of the Canton uses "Welcome to the portal of the Canton Grisons.", whereas the official tourism website welcomes people with "This is Graubünden.". --Terfili (talk) 08:16, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

German or Alemannic ?
Maybe I'm being pedantic about this, but isn't the language that's slowly been displacing this one actually Alemannisch, rather than German per se? -- Mark J (talk) 14:12, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, more precisely the diglossic system of Alemannic + Standard German is replacing it, since Romansh speakers don't end up just speaking Alemannic but Standard German as well. Actually, many Romansh children probably learn Standard German from TV or school before they learn Swiss German/Alemannic. The topic is covered a bit under Current distribution. --Terfili (talk) 14:33, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Removing "amih"-pronunciation
I've removed the link to the exemplifying a word-final voiceless palatal fricative in the word amih. This is so obviously velar or something like it that it's not useful as an example. I don't know if the description is wrong, the pronunciation odd or in a different dialect, but it isn't palatal.

If anything, compare with pronunciation in other languages at the article about the sound.

Peter Isotalo 16:34, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

IPA key
I think Romansh deserves an IPA key. It is one of the four national languages of Switzerland, and thus has higher status than Astur-Leonese, Occitan, and Franco-Provençal, all of which already have IPA keys (though the third of these is still under construction). I am no expert on Romansh, but it seems that there are plenty of sources used in this article, almost all of them in German, which I have very little knowledge of. (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 21:37, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Merge of stub articles on individual dialects
I don't see any reason to merge the articles for the Romansh dialects into this article as proposed. True, right now those articles are a bit slim in content, but there is plenty of extra content that could be added - for example by translating from the German or Romansh articles. --Terfili (talk) 06:46, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't see any reason why any of these stub articles are sacrosanct in nature. I know there is a chance that someday these dialects will become more notable as they are today, or better discussed in detail in English, but today is not that day.  I know that in the future someone can translate lengthier articles from French, German, Italian or Romansh language and so contribute to our Wikipedia in English, but for now, such translation is yet undone.  When we merge stub articles into more notable and better discussed articles, we do so in a manner that DOES NOT DELETE the stub articles.  What happens is we redirect such articles to their appropriate sections in the merged article.  Now, these redirects can be edited by some contributor in the future so that a standalone article on the separate dialects might be resurrected.  All contents in the stub articles will be preserved and merged into the main article on the Romansh language and no information will be lost, I assure that.  This is not a destructive thing.  We all want to contribute to the growth of Wikipedia, and sometimes to do that we need to gather and aggregate info into one place, minimize clutter, and prune stub articles to avoid redundancy as they now stand.  This in NO WAY prevents other contributors from bringing those stub articles back from being redirects to become standalone articles again when the need arises.  I hope you consider this merge proposal for now.  This is in NO WAY IRREVERSIBLE.  An editor in the future can reverse this for any of the individual dialects one article at a time if they want to elaborate on them more.  But for now I strongly suggest a merge of these short stub articles, as proposed.  Thank you! —-— .: seth_Nimbosa :. (talk • contribs) 10:17, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * These dialects clearly are notable and there is plenty of content to be added, as I just did with Jauer (which unlike the 5 others, doesn't even have its own standardized written form, dictionaries, and literature). Since the article about Romansh is already very long, any additional content about the individual dialects should probably go into their articles, not the main one at this point. True, nothing is lost by creating redirects, but it does create a higher barrier for people to add content if they first have to recreate the article. Having a basic stub in existence lowers the technical and mental barrier for contributors to add content. Finally, Merger states that merging should be avoided if "The separate topics could be expanded into longer standalone (but cross-linked) articles" as well as when "The topics are discrete subjects warranting their own articles, even though they might be short", which is the case for the Romansh dialects. --Terfili (talk) 13:45, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Seth Nimbosa, I see that you have gone ahead with some of your mergers without bothering to reply to my points. Usually the proper procedure on Wikipedia is to gather consensus before making changes when objections are raised. Moreover, I see that you have made other changes to the dialect section that in my opinion have introduced factual errors. The original version introduces the different dialects, then explains that these form a continuum without clear divisions, and then mentions a few common ways to group these dialects, as Romansh linguists have different ideas about this. In your version, the dialects are now listed according to one classification scheme you picked out. In my opinion this is misleading and NPOV, as readers will assume that there is a generally agreed on grouping of the dialects, when my version clearly states that the opposite is the case.

Also, through merging content from the articles on individual dialects, you have added in a variety of unsourced or overly detailed content.

I am also curious where you found the terms “Western Romansh” and “Eastern Romansh” (used by you as proper nouns). While I was studying Romansh linguistics in Switzerland, I read about this topic extensively and I have not encountered these terms. Not in Romansh, German, French, nor English. I would be interested in seeing a reference for this term as it seems like original research to me at this point. I have been too busy the past months to spend time on this, but I am now going to restore a factually accurate and sourced version of this section. I believe that this version reflects scholarly consensus in Romansh dialectology, but please discuss if you disagree. I am impartial towards whether the sample text is better placed within the dialect section or at the end of the article, but as WikiProject_Languages/Template suggests placing it at the end, I will move it there for now. --Terfili (talk) 08:14, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

move and merge Romansh literature and music into Swiss literature
proposal: comments and suggestions are welcome, this will be done shortly, as well as the merge of short stub articles on the individual dialects of Romansh, again nothing on Wikipedia is final and irreversible, so relax and feel free to discuss, engage and participate, THANKS!
 * to move the long section of Romansh literature and music and merge it to the Romansh section of the main article Swiss literature will eliminate redundant/duplicate content and streamline the article on Romansh language itself
 * what will remain is a brief synopsis/summary of moved material (with link to the moved content), and one paragraph on music, both of which could be merged with the next section Romansh in the media to produce only one section on Romansh literature, music and in the media

—-— .: seth_Nimbosa :. (talk • contribs) 17:27, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * That seems like a good idea. I think it might even be worth creating an entirely new article Romansh literature and leave a synopsis both here and in the Swiss Literature article. Otherwise the length of the section on Romansh might be a bit disproportionate compared to French and German, in which much more has been written by Swiss authors than in Romansh. --Terfili (talk) 13:52, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Terfili, I think it will not be very long compared to the other branches, because most of them are duplicate content we can streamline the articles with ZERO WASTE by incorporating content details into the main article. As proposed, after cleanup, I will leave only a summary here on the Romansh literature and music section. —-— .: seth_Nimbosa :. (talk • contribs) 11:25, 13 June 2015 (UTC)