These maps are only meant to illustrate some of the ideas in the text;
they are not cartographic gems or large files for
downloading.
Grischun / Graubunden Location map
Romansh areas are adjacent to four other Swiss Cantons (Ticino, Uri, Glarus, & St. Gallen) and two International borders (Italy and Austria). Officially, South Tyrol is both German & Italian, but the upper Vintschgau is German speaking. The language borders are based on the traditional territory and are not reflective of actual situation.
Map 2 notes:
Since Romansh was spoken beyond the area shown, the encroachment of Germanic and Italian has been quite extensive. German (Bundner) speakers who arrived up the Rhine River settled in Chur, the lower Prattigau and later Thusis. Lombardic Italian speakers settled in the three southern valleys. Val Mustair also a southern valley remains Romansh. The later wave of German speakers (Walsers) settled in higher elevations such as Rheinwald and the upper Prattigau / Davos.
The five Romansh dialects correspond to place-names (not all shown on
map).
Sursilvan Surselva (Oberbunden)
including Lumnezia, Foppa, & Cadi.
Sutsilvan Plaun (Imboden),
Tumliasco (Domlesch), Schons (Schams)
Surmeir Surses
(Oberhalbstein), Sutses, Val d' Alvra (Albula)
Puter
Engiadin' Ota (Oberengadin)
Vallader Engiadina
Bassa (Unterengadin) and Val Mustair (Munstertal)
Grischun Central (Mittelbunden) can be used to describe location such as the Hinterrhein and Albula valleys or the two dialects of Sutsilvan and Surmeiran; when used to describe the erosion of Romansh between Surselva and the lower Engadine, then Puter could be included.
Special (noteworthy) cases:
1. Trin was usually classified as Sutsilvan which was the dialect that
continued down the Rhine River valley. With the erosion of Sutsilvan and
its location adjacent to the Sursilvan, it frequently appears on maps as
part of Sursilvan.
2. Bergun as well as other parts of the Surmeir dialect were influenced
by the literary and scripture coming out of the Engadine, so the written
language is basically Puter.
3. Bivio received immigration directly from Bregaglia and today has
a German--Italian bilingual balance, landscape features remain Romansh.
Chur. The evolving dialect situation is not clear, what the 3000 or
so Romansh speakers from different areas are speaking to each other
is an interesting question. (Chur has numerous Romansh kindergartens).
MAP OF TRADITIONAL ROMANSH LANGUAGE TERRITORY IN CANTON GRISONS
Map 3 notes:
The "language territory" advocated by cartographic depictions such as this are misleading! Significant areas inside this territory are not majority (50+%) or even plurality (largest group) Romansh. The territory more accurately reflects the demographic situation in the 19th Century as well as the cultural landscape in terms of vernacular architecture and settlement patterns. The inclusion of the capital city, Chur, is significant; while one of the largest concentrations of Romansh, it has not been Romansh for hundreds of years.
The list of communes with Romansh schools is not current on this map, but the situation hasn't changed much. Some of the non-school communes are too small to support their own schools and the children go to an adjacent commune.
Official Documents refer to the language of choice that the individual communes do official business with the cantonal bureacracy. This is forthcoming and may reflect individuals instead of policy. There are 213 communes (gemeinde) in the canton and the breakdown by language: German 124, Italian 30, Sursilvan Romansh 35, Ladin Romansh 24. Sursilvan and Ladin are both official languages in the Canton.
A good source for data intensive maps is F.
Kraas.
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