Because of newcomers from the lowlands
Municipality of Savognin no longer speaks Romansh – but German
Geographically, Romansh has lost some of its size. Two Graubünden municipalities are now officially part of German-speaking Switzerland.
People speak German: the Savognin ski resort is officially changing the language.
Geographically, Romansh has lost some of its size. The two Graubünden communities Surses and Muntogna da Schons are no longer assigned to Romansh, but to German Switzerland, as the Federal Statistical Office (BFS) announced on Tuesday.
surses Never heard? The former communities of Savognin, Bivio, Salouf, Riom-Parsonz, Cunter, Tinizong-Rona, Mulegns, Sur and Marmorera, which merged in 2016, hide behind the rather unknown name.
However, the shift away from the Romansh area since the last survey five years ago cannot be explained by a decrease in the number of Romansh-speaking people in Switzerland.
The number of Rhaeto-Romanic speakers has been almost stable at just over 40,000 for decades. Around 40 percent of them lived in the Romansh area, 60 percent in the canton of Graubünden.
German is increasing in tourism communities
The FSO continues to write that the number of German-speaking people in the traditional Rhaeto-Romanic communities of Graubünden has been increasing in the tourist communities since counting began in 1860.
The tourist resorts in the Upper Engadin had already switched from Rhaeto-Romanic 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 in the course of the second half of the 20th century. From 2000 to the last revision of the language areas in 2017, however, the language borders remained stable. (SDA)