Re: CHAT: weird names,was Re: conlanging,the ulti

grandsir wrote:

>         Strange name. Where does it come from?
It was invented by a linguist who pointed out the connections
between Swiss Rumantsch on the one hand, and Ladin and Friulian
on the other.  The Rhaeti were some tribe or other who hung around
the Swiss Alps in Roman times...

>         Three Romance languages and one Germanic one? I thought Switzerland was
> more Germanic than Romance but I was wrong I think (at least as for the
> languages).
Well, yes and no.  According to the Ethnologue, there were 6.5 million
people in Switzerland in 1995, of which 1.2 million speak French,
0.3 million speak the local variety of Italian, and only 40,000
speak Rhaeto-Romance; essentially all of the remaining 5 million
speak Swiss German (and most of them know Standard German too).
So German is dominant in terms of numbers of speakers.
Details at http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/countries/Swit.html .

--
        John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan      cowan@ccil.org
Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! / Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.
                        -- Coleridge / Politzer