Thursday, September 30, 2010

Oh How I Love Romansh

I like languages, have you noticed?

I like all languages - I like the weird ones where you understand nothing and the familiar ones where you can find all the parallels. I have a weak spot for the strange, small, out of the way ones.

So I really like Romansh.

Romansch (a Romance language, as the name suggests, just like French or Spanish) is the tiniest minority language spoken in Switzerland, a country of minorities and anomolies. There are only about 60,000 speakers, but they divide themselves up between five different dialects!

Switzerland is so wonderfully silly.

A friend just forwarded me this nice little New York Times article about Romansh speakers.

Oh, I do love Romansh.

2 comments:

  1. I LOVE the Romansh version of here comes the sun that you put on the sunshine mix. I play is all the time in my car, trying to get to the point where I can sing along!

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  2. I'm so glad! I love that song - well, song version - too.

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