Rhaeto-Romance languages are a Romance language sub-family which includes multiple languages spoken in North-Eastern Italy, Western Austria and Switzerland.

Some of the varieties are:

• Friulian: Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, Italy
• Ladin: Dolomite mountains in Italy (in the regions of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and Veneto)
  • Nones: Dolomite mountains in Italy (centered around the Val di Non (Non Valley) in the region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol)
  • Solandro: Dolomite mountains in Italy (centered around the Val di Sole (Sun Valley or Valley of the Sun) in the region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol)
• Romansh: Switzerland, parts of northern Italy and westernmost Austria. Romansh has co-official status in Switzerland with three other national languages. Its dialects are:
  • Puter
  • Surmiran
  • Sursilvan
  • Sutsilvan
  • Vallader
  • Rumantsch Grischun is the standardized literary language, constructed by the Swiss linguist Heinrich Schmid in 1982.

Related languages

The family is most closely related to its nearest neighbors: Gallo-Romance (French, Franco-Provençal, Occitan), Gallo-Italian (Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnano), Venetian, and Istriote. A number of lexical items are shared with Ibero-Romance due to the similar date of latinization for both regions.

Origin

Its origin is as a dialect of the provincial Latin of the central Alps, which were incorporated into the Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus. Before the Roman conquest, this area was Celtic-speaking in the north and Rhaetian-speaking in the south. By the end of the Roman Empire, there was an unbroken region of distinctive Romance speech here, gradually secluded into the high valleys by the encroachment of German from the north and of Italian from the south. Indeed, the Germanized zone north and south of the watershed of the Central Alps was formerly an old Romance-speaking area linking Swiss Romansh with the Dolomites until the close of the 17th century.^{citation needed}

Features

Rhaeto-Romance is distinguished by a number of features which separate it from its neighbors.

• diphthongization of Vulgar Latin closed e into ei
  • pei "foot"
  • fieste "party, feast"

• occasional change of stressed a to e, particularly after a palatalized velar

• rounding (fronting?) of long u into ü (mainly Swiss)
  • Lad plü "more"

• fall of final vowels save -a, which often weakens into -e (in Friulian there is also a feminine plural in -is)
  • Lad sëra, Friul sere "evening"
  • Lad festa, Friul fieste "party"
  • Friul pie 'pia (pious, f.)' "press"

• general palatalization of the ca and ga groups
  • cjampanis "bells" [tSampanis]

• conservation of cl-, pl-, fl-; conservation of Germanic w
  • SwRom clav/clev "key"
  • Friul plui "more"
  • SwRom flad, Lad fle, Friul flât "breath"
  • Lad vera, Friul vuere "war"

• voicing of intervocalic unvoiced consonants

• fall of intervocalic voiced consonants

• conservation of final -s, lead to single case based on acc (oblique); formerly a double case system
  • SwRom sunàis "to ring, 2ndp.sing.)"
  • SwRom culinis "hills"
  • SwRom bels ölgs "beautiful eyes"

Examples

See also

• Rhaetian language, an unrelated language spoke in ancient times around the area where Rhaeto-Romance is now spoken.

External links

• Ethnologue report for Rhaetian languages