A Very Big Fight Over a Very Small Language

"Cathomas had already written from Chur, in the canton of the Grisons, having recently become the general secretary of the Lia Rumantscha, a small association charged with protecting Switzerland's least known national language, Romansh. Spoken by less than one per cent of the Swiss population, the language was itself splintered into five major "idioms," not always readily intelligible to one another, each with its own spelling conventions."

"Earlier attempts at unification had collapsed in rivalries. In his letter, Cathomas said that Schmid's authority would be valuable in standardizing the language. Cathomas wrote in German but started and ended in his native Sursilvan, the biggest of the Romansh idioms: " Jeu engraziel cordialmein per Vies interess e Vossa attenziun per quest problem." Translation: "I thank you very much for your interest and attention to this problem.""

"Ask him how it all began, and he remembers the ice. It was a bitter morning in January, 1982, when Bernard Cathomas, aged thirty-six, carefully picked his way up a slippery, sloping Zurich street. His destination was No. 33, an ochre house with green shutters-the home of Heinrich Schmid, a linguist at the University of Zurich. Inside, the décor suggested that "professor" was an encompassing identity: old wooden floors, a faded carpet."

Bernard Cathomas, as general secretary of the Lia Rumantscha, sought help in 1982 to standardize Romansh, a national Swiss language spoken by under one percent of the population. Romansh is divided into five major idioms with distinct spelling systems and limited mutual intelligibility. Earlier unification attempts failed amid rivalries. Cathomas appealed to linguist Heinrich Schmid for authoritative guidance; Schmid had learned Romansh later and contributed to the Dicziunari Rumantsch Grischun. The push for a unified written form provoked prolonged disputes about authenticity, regional identity, and which spoken forms should be preserved or promoted.

Read at The New Yorker