Geographically, Romansh has lost some of its size. The two Graubünden communities of Surses and Muntogna da Schons are no longer assigned to Romansh, but to German Switzerland, the Federal Statistical Office (BFS) announced on Tuesday.
moratoriums? Never heard? The former communities of Savognin, Bivio, Salouf, Riom-Parsonz, Cunter, Tinizong-Rona, Mulegns, Sur and Marmorera, which merged in 2016, are hiding behind the rather unknown name.
However, the shift away from the Rhaeto-Romance area since the last survey five years ago cannot be explained by a decrease in the number of Rhaeto-Romance speakers in Switzerland.
The number of Romansh speakers has been almost stable for decades at just over 40,000. About 40 percent of them lived in Romansh, 60 percent in the canton of Graubünden.
German is on the rise in tourist communities
The FSO further writes that the number of German-speaking people in the traditional Rhaeto-Romanic communities in Graubünden has increased in the tourist communities since the beginning of the census in 1860.
The tourist resorts in Upper Engadine had already switched from Romansh to German-speaking Switzerland around 1888 and the communities in Domleschg around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
This change was strongly accentuated during the second half of the 20th century. However, from 2000 until the last revision of the language areas in 2017, language boundaries remained stable. (SDA)