In the schools of the town of Evolène (Valais canton), Franco-Provençal is still taught.
In Switzerland, there is still a whole scattering of small languages and dialects that no one outside the country has even heard of. Some of them are on the verge of extinction or are already almost forgotten. The portal Swissinfo.ch offers an introduction to them.
1. The dialect of Ticino canton
The dialect of the Italian language spoken in Ticino canton and in some regions of Graubünden canton is a variety of Italian belonging to the group of Lombard dialects, i.e., part of the family of dialects of northern Italy. In Switzerland, this dialect can vary greatly from region to region.
Over the past decades, the number of people speaking it has been steadily declining. While in the 1970s the majority of Ticino residents spoke the dialect among themselves at home, by 2012 only 30% of citizens used this language. A similar trend, albeit in a weaker form, is observed in the Italian-speaking regions of Graubünden canton around the settlements of Misox, Calanca, Bergell, and Puschlav.
2. The Gurin dialect of German (Bosco Gurin)
In the 13th century, German-speaking inhabitants of the territories that later formed Valais canton emigrated to the region of present-day Ticino canton in search of a better life and settled in the remote valley of Bosco Gurin.
Having found themselves for many years in a situation of linguistic autarky, the inhabitants of this only German-speaking village in the Italian-speaking region preserved in their language many words and grammatical forms from the lexicon of Middle High German (Mittelhochdeutsch), which dominated the history of the German language from about 1050 to 1350, and then developed them in an absolutely unique direction.
And that is precisely why the Gurin dialect is considered a true treasure and gem for philologists, who, however, are already far more numerous than those who actually use this dialect in everyday life.
3. The Mutten dialect
Settlers from Valais also brought their language to Graubünden canton. It would be particularly interesting in this context to look at the German dialect from the region of the town of Mutten, because from a philological and linguistic point of view, it does not belong to any of the existing groups of Valais dialects.
In 1934, Swiss linguist and dialect specialist Rudolf Hotzenköcherle wrote a doctoral dissertation on "Die Mundart von Mutten" ("The Dialect of Mutten"), but even he did not fully unravel the mystery of this language. And now there is almost nothing left to study: this archaic form of speech has almost completely disappeared from everyday use.
4. Romansh language
Romansh is the fourth national language of Switzerland and an official language of regional significance. It arose from the mixture of Vulgar Latin with Celtic and Rhaetian languages. They were spoken in Raetia (Rhaetia), the westernmost of the Danube provinces of the Roman Empire, which was part of the Italian diocese.
On its territory are now located such Swiss cities as Chur (Curia Raetorum) and Bellinzona (Bilitia). Romansh is included in the UNESCO "Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger." While in the 19th century the majority of Graubünden's population spoke it, today no more than one-fifth does. Throughout Switzerland, approximately 0.5% of the population still speak one of the five varieties of Romansh. The most vulnerable of this group is the Sutsilvan dialect. It is now studied in only one single primary school.
5. Franco-Provençal or Arpitan language
Until the beginning of the 19th century, the inhabitants of French-speaking Switzerland – except for the territory of present-day Jura canton – spoke Franco-Provençal. In this case, it is not a dialect of French, but rather an independent language belonging to the Romance language group. In this sense, it was as independent a language as Romansh.
Then modern standard French replaced Franco-Provençal, which today can only be heard from the mouths of, as a rule, elderly Swiss in Fribourg canton or in the Lower Valais region, i.e., in the French-speaking part of the bilingual German-French Valais canton. However, there is a positive exception here: the so-called Evolène dialect (Patois d’Evolène), being a variety of Franco-Provençal spoken in the Val d’Hérens of Valais canton, is well preserved, and it is even studied in primary school.
6. Frainc-Comtou dialect
The Frainc-Comtou dialect belongs to the French "langue d'oïl" (also "langue d'oïl", Fr. Langues d'oïl), a group of Romance idioms of northern France that existed in the Middle Ages and differed from the southern French idioms, which received the name "langue d'oc" (Fr. Langue d'oc, from the Latin word hoc: "so"/"yes"). In Switzerland, it was spoken in Jura canton, but by the beginning of the 20th century, this dialect had practically disappeared.
Currently, efforts are being made in the Confederation and France to preserve and revive Frainc-Comtou, although it is now spoken by about 3,800 people in both countries.
7. Romani language, or Romanes
Romanes is the language of the Sinti and Roma, nomadic Gypsies who once migrated to Europe from India. The Romanes language belongs, like Urdu or Hindi, to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. Today, between 50,000 and 80,000 Sinti and Roma live in Switzerland, who have long been seeking official recognition of Romanes as a language of national minorities in Switzerland.
8. Yenish jargon, or the language of the “white nomads” <\/h2>
Some descendants of European Roma living in Switzerland speak, in addition to Swiss German, the Yenish language. This special language is transmitted orally and has no written form. It is a variety of German, although different variations exist in different countries – in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Benelux countries, and France. The Yenish vocabulary is historically closely related to the German argot, the so-called Rotwelsch, a secret language of beggars used in the Middle Ages in German-speaking countries.<\/p>
Between 1926 and 1973, Switzerland pursued a policy of systematically removing children from Roma families, which had a very negative impact on the language as well. Many “white gypsies” (“Yenish”) have to learn it as adults. There are currently no statistics on how many Swiss residents speak Yenish.<\/p>
9. Yiddish<\/h2>
Yiddish, serving as a means of communication for European Jews, is not actually a single language, consisting of many dialects and an artificial “high language” developed by YIVO, or the Institute for Jewish Research, founded in 1925 in Vilnius and based in New York since 1940. In the Surbtal valley in the canton of Aargau, where Swiss Jews had to live until the mid-19th century, a Swiss variant of Yiddish emerged: Surbtaler or Endinger Yiddish. By the end of the 20th century, it had completely died out, but some words from it entered Swiss German and even standard German – for example, the word “Stuss” meaning “nonsense.”<\/p>
Some descendants of Orthodox Jews who immigrated to Switzerland from Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20th century still speak Eastern Yiddish dialects.<\/p>
10. Matten dialect<\/h2>
The Matten dialect, or Mattenenglisch, is an extinct, deliberately invented secret language spoken in the Bernese district of Matte. Today, it is a very prestigious central district of Bern, popular among the bohemian crowd, but in the past, this quarter, located directly on the banks of the Aare River, regularly fell victim to floods, so it was mainly inhabited by the poor and declassed elements, who invented this language.<\/p>
This sociolect developed on the basis of Bernese German, but words in the Matten dialect were transformed in a special way: the first letters of a word up to and including the first vowel were separated and placed at the end. The letter “i” was always added to the beginning of the word, and the vowel “e” was used as an ending (for example: “primus” – “imuspriye”). This language also included many borrowings from languages such as French, Hebrew, Romani, and the German argot Rotwelsch. Over time, many expressions from the Matten dialect appealed to other residents of Bern and even entered the local variant of Swiss German.<\/p>
Language or dialect?<\/h3>
The question of distinguishing a dialect from a language is not as simple as one might wish. There are both linguistic and historical-political criteria for determining whether a given mode of linguistic communication in a particular area is a dialect or constitutes a separate independent language.<\/p>
The renowned linguist Max Weinreich, for example, argued that “a language is a dialect with an army and navy” (“A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot”). In other words, elevating a dialect to the status of a language supposedly occurs only for political reasons.<\/p>
Is that so? This can and should be debated. We have tried to compile for you a small glossary of concepts and terms, through which you can see what a “dark forest” modern philology and dialectology can be.<\/p>
Full-fledged language<\/strong> – interlocutors understand each other. At the same time, this language clearly differs from other languages. Ideally, there is a standardized written language and a common literature in that language.<\/p>
Dialect<\/strong> – a local or regional variety of speech (usually spoken), differing from the standardized language.<\/p>
Regiolect<\/strong> – an oral language of everyday communication widespread in one region.<\/p>
Sociolect<\/strong> – a language spoken by a particular social group.<\/p>
Idiom<\/strong> – a standardized written language for one group of dialects.<\/p>
Sibilla BONDOLFI.
Translation by Lyudmila Klot.<\/strong><\/p>