Rhaeto-Romance, also called Rheto-Romance or Rhaetian, is a purported subfamily of the Romance languages spoken in southeastern Switzerland and northeastern Italy, named for the former Roman province of Raetia. Whether its three members, Romansh in Switzerland's canton of Graubunden and Ladin and Friulian in Italy's Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige and Province of Belluno, actually form a single genetic subgroup descended from a common ancestor, rather than three separate Romance varieties that merely share some features from geographic proximity, is a long-running linguistic dispute known as the Questione Ladina. The three languages together have roughly 660,000 speakers, with Friulian accounting for about 500,000 of them, by far the largest of the group.
Facts
RegionSouth-eastern Switzerland, in the canton of Graubunden, and north-eastern Italy, in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige and the Province of Belluno. 1 Speaker Count Proto-Language StatusWhether Rhaeto-Romance is a genuine genetic subfamily descended from one common ancestor beyond ordinary Vulgar Latin, rather than three separate Romance varieties sharing features from geographic proximity, is a long-running dispute called the Questione Ladina. Clifford Leonard published a 1964 paper, Proto-Rhaeto-Romance and French, among the scholarship addressing a hypothesized shared ancestral stage, but the grouping itself is not settled consensus. 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia: Rhaeto-Romance languages
Wikimedia FoundationIntroduction, paragraph 1
is spoken in south-eastern Switzerland and north-eastern Italy.
Introduction, paragraph 1, region clause
is spoken in south-eastern Switzerland and north-eastern Italy.
Introduction, paragraph 1, speaker count clause
Their combined number of speakers is about 660,000; the large majority of these (about 500,000) speak Friulian.
Introduction, paragraph 1, subfamily dispute clause
The question of whether these languages actually form a subfamily is called the Questione Ladina.
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