WALSERSPRACHE - The four main objectives of the Alpine Space ...

Max Waibel
Should the experiment of reviving the Walser language fall through, no one could blame
governmental policies, since they are quite favourable. The question deeply embedded in the
revitalisation of the language, something I personally have no answer to, goes a bit like this:
how could one possibly get young people excited about a dialect which is unwieldy when it
comes to practical matters? And that ushers in straightaway the next question: which contents
should be carried forward? It is a fact that in the last 100 years the entire alpine living
space (and with it the Walser space as well) has suffered a setback which by far tops
what happened in the previous 700 years. In the process the main kernel of civilisation
expressed by the language of the Walsers has gone awash. That concerns mainly the old
mountain husbandry, the ways and means of living on and off mountain territory. There
is nothing anymore governments could possibly do to bring back a way of life conveyed by
sentences like: «ich hän gmolchu di Geiss» or «ds Schaaf hed di Wollu». And by which other
way, then? Three realms could be taken into serious consideration: 1) the family, 2) the
neighbourhood, 3) the companionship. Popular lore, deeply rooted in all three, could well
be used to revitalise the language. The question however is how … There could be some possibilities
with recordings, which were engraved in the southern Walser area. Heinrich Welf
is the story-teller of the first tale. Follows a folk-tale. First, we should make sure all those who
listen can understand. There is a lot one could talk about and young people could discuss
with elders how to concoct new tales or revive waning forms of story-telling. Follows another
recorded anecdote. One could wonder if perhaps parents or grandparents do not by any
chance know similar stories, in Italian, or in French, which might have been carried over
into the language of the Walsers. One could also talk a lot about the core of this anecdote.
Follows an amusing story. It also was recorded in Macugnaga and the voice is that of
Augusto Pala. One could have a hearty laugh about the gullibility of countryside folks and
jokes on neighbours, using the Atlas of the Swiss Popular Harbinger which has appeaing
since 1977. Old customs could be revived from the motifs in the story. Let us now come to
oral history. Many Walser places stand out as some of the most picturesque in the central
Alps, but their beauty does not come without a price: snow slides and floodings worked
havoc. Walsers are not blameless, since their ancestors saw an enemy in every forest. Only
in the twentieth century some repair work was done. «The avalanche goes, where she
already went, where she has not as yet gone, and where she never will go again” goes an
old proverb. How true it is, was too well demonstrated by the catastrophic slide in Galtür on
February 23 rd , 1999, which took 31 lives. Let us finger through older documents. Follows a
description and a dialogue in Alagna’s Walser. This document brings to the fore some noteworthy
elements: new things, specially technical devices, have entered the language as loan
words. Quite likely Maria Ghigher, who told the tale, had never heard the German word
«Strom» (current), so she thought she had something to apologise for, something which she
felt she should have known. Well, even loan words could become bargaining chips on the
road to revitalisation. One question could be: why are modern appliances called with
Italian names in Walser settlements in Italy? By telling similar stories to older generations
59