Rhaeto-Romance
Sign in to saveproposed branch of Gallo-Rhaetian consisting of Friulian, Ladin, and Romansh
Key facts
- Geographic distribution
- Italy , Switzerland
- Linguistic classification
- Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latinic Romance Italo-Western Western Gallo - Iberian ? Gallo-Romance Gallo-Rhaetian? Rhaeto-Romance
- Early forms
- Old Latin Vulgar Latin Proto-Romance Old Gallo-Romance
- Subdivisions
- Friulian Ladin Romansh
- Glottolog
- None
via Wikipedia infobox
Article
Rhaeto-Romance, Rheto-Romance, Rhaeto-Italian, or Rhaetian, is a purported subfamily of the Romance languages that is spoken in south-eastern Switzerland and north-eastern Italy. The name "Rhaeto-Romance" refers to the former Roman province of Raetia. The question of whether these languages actually form a subfamily is called the Questione Ladina. The Italian linguist Graziadio Ascoli, writing in 1873, found them to share a number of intricacies and believed they formed a linguistic group. The Rhaeto-Romance languages differ from Italian in their evolution from Latin by having passed through a stage with phonemic vowel length, undergone certain consonant developments, and possibly developed a pair of central rounded vowels (now lost everywhere). If the subfamily is genuine, three languages would belong to it: Romansh in Switzerland, and Ladin and Friulian in Italy. Their combined number of speakers is about 660,000; the large majority of these (about 500,000) speak Friulian.
Origin