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Language shift in the Raeto-Romansh community 207
guage. Virtually all speakers of Romansh can speak either two or more languages,
which makes them – beside their Italian-speaking compatriots – truly
multilingual individuals. Thus, their attitude to bilingualism needs to combine
“an emotional attachment to Romansh and a rational commitment to German”
(Stevenson 1990: 252).
Most of the major reasons for the decline of Romansh were already listed
some thirty years ago by McRae (1983) in his Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual
Societies: Switzerland. It appears that most of those reasons are still
relevant today, which means that they have not been eliminated, and the countermeasures
aiming to strengthen the position of Romansh in the meantime have
turned out to be less than effective. Kenneth McRae (1983) compiled a long list
of problems directly affecting the Romansh minority in Switzerland. These
problems include: the waning proportion of Romansh speakers resulting from
inter-cantonal migration; the mixing of population in the canton; the lack of any
major Romansh-speaking municipality; no recognition of the Romansh region
in either cantonal or federal law; the utmost dialectal variation (discussed in the
following section of the article); an equal divide of the total population of the
Grisons in religion between Protestants and Roman Catholics. All these problems
surely are not counteracted with sufficient determination by institutional
controls. At present, Liga Romontscha, an organized interest group, seems to be
the last mainstay of the Romansh languages. Unfortunately, its frequently successful
activities are neither reflected in authoritative decision-making, nor
forged into any legal enforcement.
In the discussions about the mechanisms of language change, the issue of
speakers’ attitudes is often raised. Perhaps those who most deplore the vanishing
minority languages are not the ones using them in everyday life, like linguists
or intellectual elites. It leaves no room for illusion that today Romansh is
associated by its native speakers with the language of the elderly and the traditional,
agrarian or pastoral culture, whereas modern technological vocabulary is
sought in German. In his study, Weinreich (1968 /1953/) proved that Romansh
ranked low in social prestige and German was to secure educational, professional
and economic advancement. McRae (1983) writes about a “substantial
attitudinal gap” between the Raetoroman intellectual elite and the average citizen,
which leads us to conclude that the survival of Romansh has remained primarily
an elite concern. The future of Romansh is very much dependent on the
commitment of Romansh speakers themselves, for it is difficult to cultivate
a minority language, when this minority itself decides on a majority language
for practical reasons. The absence of these pragmatic reasons for language
maintenance puts the language in jeopardy, thereby implying an indissoluble
relationship between language and economics (see also Grin 1990).