Community Response

In response to language endangerment, the Romansh community has started Lia Rumantscha.

By Lia Rumantscha - Lia Rumantscha, Public Domain, Link

Lia Rumantscha is a platform that helps teach the community about Romansh culture and language. It has a Romansh dictionary, lists Romansh cultural events, has access to lessons to learn Romansh, has access to support for special interes political groups to expand Romansh, has access to support for educational groups, as well as much more. Lia Rumantscha also has access to childrens books and media in Romansh. One of their current projects is to expand the access to Romansh in education. They are trying to provide families with language games and board games in Romansh, provide courses to municipal staff about Romansh, and provide teaching materials to teachers in areas where people speak Romansh.

In addition to Lia Rumantscha, there are other organizations that aim to preserve Romansh. One of these is the University of Zurich, which pays two professors to manage the Romansh department. They offer classes about Romansh literature, the language pf Romansh, and also do a lot of research on the Romansh language. In the past, they recieved money from Switzerland's Federal Technology Institute. However, the institute has stopped funding them, which worries Romansh speakers. "Swiss language patriots up in arms – Romansh judged too expensive” was the headline in Zurich’s Tages-Anzeiger on September 9. The paper revealed that the federal technology institute ETH Zurich had decided to stop contributing money towards a Romansh chair at the University of Zurich. “A narrow-minded decision by a great institution which is betraying its own tradition on cultural issues regarding language,”Cla Riatsch, the professor who currently holds the 50% position, told swissinfo.ch. ETH Zurich has contributed CHF100,000 ($102,000) a year to the position since 1985 but has said it will stop doing so at the end of 2018" (Stephens, 2017).