[psuter]

> 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...