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| Rhaeto-Romance | |
|---|---|
| Rhaeto-Italian Rhaetian | |
| (debated) | |
| Geographic distribution | Italy, Switzerland |
| Linguistic classification | Indo-European
|
Early forms | |
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | None |
 | |
Rhaeto-Romance, Rheto-Romance, Rhaeto-Italian, or Rhaetian, is a purported subfamily of the Romance languages that is spoken in south-eastern Switzerland and north-eastern Italy. The name "Rhaeto-Romance" refers to the former Roman province of Raetia. The question of whether these languages actually form a subfamily is called the Questione Ladina. The Italian linguist Graziadio Ascoli, writing in 1873, found them to share a number of intricacies and believed they formed a linguistic group.[1] The Rhaeto-Romance languages differ from Italian in their evolution from Latin by having passed through a stage with phonemic vowel length, undergone certain consonant developments, and possibly developed a pair of central rounded vowels (now lost everywhere).[2] If the subfamily is genuine, three languages would belong to it: Romansh in Switzerland, and Ladin and Friulian in Italy. Their combined number of speakers is about 660,000; the large majority of these (about 500,000) speak Friulian.[3]
- ^ Beninca, Paola; Haiman, John (2005). The Rhaeto-Romance Languages. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-96548-9.
- ^ Leonard, Clifford S. (1964). "Proto-Rhaeto-Romance and French". Language. 40 (1): 23–32. doi:10.2307/411921. JSTOR 411921.
- ^ "Ethnologue: Languages of the World". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2018-04-28.