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by psuter 2913 days ago
I speak Romansch (although poorly, by now), AMA. (Or even better, out yourself as a fellow speaker!)
3 comments

Romansch music? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtMP7Nw0E3g is the only Romansh song I've ever encountered in my American existence.
MX3 is a platform curated by the national radio stations in all four languages. The playlist by Radio Rumantsch would be a good start: https://mx3.ch/p/2ev (not all the songs are in romansch in there, though).
This sounds very familiar. Do you know any other variants of this song?
Here is the english version: https://youtu.be/-w2m-TeLi6I
Do you foresee an enlargement in the total number of speakers? Why?

Also, if I got it correctly, Romansh is one of Switzerland's national languages, so theoretically one could move to Graubünden and acquire Swiss citizenship through Romansh, and not French, German, or Italian?

> Do you foresee an enlargement in the total number of speakers? Why?

In total number of speakers, it's possible, and I think it's been the case historically (just by general population growth). In relative numbers (fraction of the population), it's been shrinking and I don't see this changing. Main reasons are that:

  a) as mentioned in the BBC article, people move, and it's very difficult to keep the language after one or two generations if you don't live in that region,
  b) even if you were to move to a Romansh-speaking area (as a Swiss national or as an immigrant), the incentive to learn is low because almost everyone also speaks (Swiss-)German.
(just my non-expert opinion)

> national language

It has a slightly different status than the other 3 languages, Wikipedia explains it well [1]. I don't know if you could get citizenship that way but you'd definitely be on the news.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh_language#Official_stat...

Is it somehow easier to acquire Swiss citizenship in Romansh vs more popular Swiss languages? Or somehow immigrating to Graubünden is easier than other areas of Switzerland? I don't get how this 'loophole' would work.
It's not a loophole. Just a fun corner case to think about.
I still remember how to say "i am a very hungry hamster" from high school. Does that count? ;-D
I think you mean 'guinea pig' :)