Speaking Romansh in Switzerland

Ever fascinated by rare languages, I visited the Engadin in Grisson, Switzerland where I met several native speakers of Romansch, one of the four official languages in the country. There are about 100,000 people who still speak Romansch and I was grateful for the chance to explore their native valleys in the southeast corner of Switzerland

[@cseblivestreaming]

As a romansch speaker myself i find it very intriguing to see people interested in our little language!

[@victordrumond4996]

I'm Brazilian and it's like a really cool Portuguese accent mixed with German. It sounds so beautiful

[@hb1338]

We love the fact that the Swiss people refuse to allow big corporate and global interests to dictate to them.

[@cseblivestreaming]

@@hb1338 it’s a culture and heritage after all

[@haminatmiyaxwen]

Allegra, are you able to write out what the first man said? I am learning more about Romansch and any text helps!

[@cseblivestreaming]

@@haminatmiyaxwen ​ „cugnoschais vus quella poesia?“ „Na quista nu cugnoscha“ „Quella poesia es (ais) da ..(cut off)“

[@MarelisaFabrega]

I speak Italian, and when the older gentleman was speaking I could understand almost everything he said. Romansch is a beautiful language. I heard of it for the first time today.

[@juanleal2873]

I speak spanish and it happend the same to me

[@messiasfernandes2177]

@@juanleal2873 I speak Portuguese and it happened the same to me as well

[@velochlauer585]

As an Italian, would you say it's similar to the Friauli dialect?

[@rebeccagutierrez1960]

Me too.

[@pietrotriscari7905]

@@velochlauer585 I am Friulian and I'd say my language and rumantsch are pretty similar, but Friulian is definitely more close to the eastern varieties of Ladin (Cadorin, Fassan, Fodom), while Rumantsch sounds to me more related to Badiot Ladin. I guess this is due to the fact that friulian and eastern ladin are more conservative (maybe we have more old latin and celtic words) while western ladin and rumantsch are more influenced by southern german dialects. I'd say I understood more or less 60-70% of what the people in the video were saying.

[@RolandodellaValle]

We are fighting in Switzerland to keep alive this beautiful language. The Germanization in the area is continuing. In the middle ages this language was spoken until the lake of Constance.

[@tamar7941]

could you help me with my romansh?

[@ilyakhomchenko5174]

Good luck! Keep up with the good work!

[@Wandrative]

Latin didn’t exist in the Alps before the Romans.

[@solinvictus7582]

@@Wandrative And?

[@sergiocazzaro4571]

@@Wandrativeneither did German

[@jhk655]

sounds like a cross between itallian and german, strange.

[@00Trademark00]

It sounds to me like a cross between Italian, German and Portuguese actually.

[@DRAKO9764]

00Trademark00 to me it rounds like italian, german, portughese, spanish, romanian and some other influence. I'm romanian and i can't understand all he said but there are some words that are almost identical to romanian ones.

[@basilerasidy]

I felt like a cross between Portugues Italian and Russian !!

[@Andrea-fh5vv]

To me, it sounds a mix of Italian, German, French and Portuguese.

[@1labuakimegnyerteasegberug596]

salut ! I am fluent romanian speaker......native; the gentleman is 50%Italian and 50% German speaker

[@Juniorfoxnetdude]

Coming from someone who speaks Portuguese, I could understand a fairly amount of what was said in this video. This is amazing.

[@samuelnascimento3143]

I understand a few words(Im Brazilian),but its very awesome!

[@Alkros56]

Oï ! it is normal (I am portuguese too) the portuguese langage comes from a mix between the germanic language used by the first people to live in the land that later became Portugal, and latin , so portuguese have both base in his creation :)

[@dimitrygaliano8718]

+Alkros so uma pergunta se todos voces falam portugues para que o ingles?

[@tacitoconte]

Devido ao fato do romenche ser uma língua latina, assim como o português

[@adrianomoratellifonini4233]

Verdade, muitas palavras parecidas com o português, muitas parecidas com o italiano e algumas com o francês, mas algumas poucas palavras tem uma sonoridade q lembra o alemão, uma língua muito interessante.

[@kevinelruler]

Sounds like a mix of Portuguese and German, really weird but awesome at the same time.

[@pietropistis3081]

Actually, this language don't have so many similarities with Portuguese, neither Spanish. Its more like a German-Italian dialectic. Remember that Romanish is a vulgar Latin and fits better with the Italian which is closer to Latin without mentioning the German influence.

[@inclinethineearmusic2732]

It was brought to the region by Roman soldiers and merchants - i believe it is a vulgarized form of Latin. Over the centuries, though German words did come into the language. Portuguese would also have a remnant of Latin as well.

[@SteveFlatEarth]

I speak Portuguese and can understand Italian. It seems similar.

[@Soluna1221]

Hi, i speak Spanish, Catalan, English and Dutch (bit of German), and i must say it seems sometimes catalan, sometimes portiguese, italian en german. Amazing!

[@SteveFlatEarth]

Yes an odd feeling to sort of understand a foreign language. It really shows that at the root (sanskrit?) they are all the same.

[@musicalcharge]

Obviously the debate about "which language is closest to Latin" gets muddied, because people mix up Classical Latin (the standardized form not used in everyday contexts) with Vulgar Latin (any of a very large variety of forms of spoken Latin) and Proto-Romance (the hypothetical language from which all modern Romance languages are descended, and only one form of Vulgar Latin). That said, when considering which modern Romance language is "closest" to Proto-Romance, one should look at phonology, morphology, and syntax; not the lexicon, because having more Latin words does not make a language somehow genetically more closely related to Latin (e.g. English). So, first phonology: closest modern language is Sardinian, which has preserved a variety of features (for example, no change in vowels [i] and [u]; [k] and [g] don't change before front vowels). Second, morphology: Romanian, which is the only Romance language to have case inflections on nouns (though the system is, nonetheless, simplified from Proto-Romance's already simplified case system). Third, syntax: every modern Romance language has undergone extensive syntactic change due to the loss of the case system. No modern Romance language is scrambling, all are fairly strictly right-branching (unlike Latin's mixed right- and left-branching constructions), etc. Ultimately, setting aside differences in phonology and lexicon, all modern Romance languages are far more similar to each other than any of them are to "Latin," which makes this whole debate somewhat silly.

[@leotato56]

Nick Farmer I totally agree with you. In some way Latin influenced all the languages included the German languages too! German in declinations and structure is more Latin than the modern Romance languages.

[@luketurechek6867]

+Ettore Tangorra That isn't because of Latin influence, the Germanic languages are sister languages to the Italic languages in the Indo-European family tree.

[@leotato56]

Yes, exactrly, we are all indo-european !

[@juanme555]

@@luketurechek6867 No.

[@luketurechek6867]

@@juanme555 you're not prepared to get info a discussion about Indo European historical linguistics. Go back to bed.

[@thiagoracca]

I speak Portuguese as a native language and I get like 90% percent of the old guy said.... great language

[@Aristomenis31]

+Thiago Racca It's actually a mix of Swiss-German and Italian? And I'm from right near Les Grisson. But your right is sounds Portugese

[@Aristomenis31]

Portuguese*

[@VitorEmanuelOliver]

+Thiago Racca mesma coisa aqui loco dashduah

[@ulukmaksat6609]

Can u write it in Portuguese what he told ?? thnx

[@thiagoracca]

I tried to put some examples, of what I am hearing and my interpretation of what it was based on Portuguese... I put romansch by ears I don't speak romansch... Romasch - Mi Nombre est Niculin Bazel Portuguese - Meu Nome é Niculin Bazel English - My name is Niculin Bazel Romasch - Esso Cresi qui in Zuoz Portuguese - Eu Cresci Aqui em Zuoz English - I was raised here in Zuoz Romasch - So est pa mel un beliscam val--- Portuguese - Sim isto pra mim é uma belíssima vila English - Yes, this place for me is one beautiful village

[@aliciaquerolherrero8049]

Engadiña, terra fiña!

[@iancrhd]

​@Doge di Amalfi in realtà sarebbe più gallego che spagnolo, ma vabbe, abbiamo già capito che sei uno scemo

[@iancrhd]

@Doge di Amalfi L'italiano non è la mia lingua nativa. Sono uno spagnolo del cazzo che vive in Italia e parla la tua lingua da tre anni. Potrei essere uno straniero analfabeta, ma al meno non manco il rispetto ad altre persone dipendendo dal loro origine.

[@iancrhd]

@Doge di Amalfi mi hai appena confermato che sei uno scemo.

[@carlosmpsenyorcapitacollon6977]

@Doge di Amalfi Ma mi pare che é della Galizia.

[@user-ip8dg5uv5q]

@Doge di Amalfi calla esa bocaza, anda xD.

[@baykkus]

Wow, it's like a weird mix of European Portuguese, Italian and German. As a native spanish speaker I could only get some words.

[@jonscot8393]

I asked a woman from this area to speak Romansh for me as I had never heard it spoken. She was too embarrassed to. I really don't know way as it's beautiful. Sadly this is the 1st time I hear it some 20 years later.

[@gustavodemira7416]

It sounds like Italian with Portuguese accent and Romenian influence

[@ManuelMontoyaRdz]

As a Mexican, it sounds like some kind of Portuguese. "Terra fina", pretty land, yeah, is Latin.

[@ConciseOxford100]

Sounds like a German had a one night stand with Vulgar Latin and this was the result.

[@leotato56]

ConciseOxford100 All the Romance dialects/languages of Southern Switzerland and Northern Italy (until La Spezia-Pèsaro geographical line) have Gallic-Italian sounds like ö ,ü, ä but they have NOTHING TO DO with German !!!!!!!!

[@ranaamerindia]

ConciseOxford100 as an Italian who lives not too far away from the Swiss border, this sounds much more like my dialect rather than German :) Other Italians usually consider my dialect close to French (and in fact it has some forms which are very similar, if not the same). Consider that I can understand more or less the 65% of what they say without subtitles and without having had a single lesson of Rumantsch. Please bear in mind that in Italy the standard language is very different from province to province in term of accent, inflection, pronunciation and sometimes even verbal forms. On the side of this melting pot of "Italians" there are dialects. You can count thousands of dialects in Italy that may either be close to ancient languages mixed up with Latin, may be very similar to ancient Albanese (in the South of Italy), to Basque (Sardinian), German (South Tyrol), French (Valle d'Aosta and Piedmont), Slovenian (Trieste area)...

[@Nonames569]

Nothing common with German. It is Romansh.

[@RolandodellaValle]

@@Nonames569 me as a Swiss agree with you, it is 100% Latin.

[@RolandodellaValle]

@Jonathan Soko yes there is some loan word, because speakers have forgotten the Romansh original word. Unfortunately most of Romansh regions have been germanized.

[@linkyoutubistico2129]

0:51 "durante os últimos trinta anos" it's like portuguese, omg

[@Jljujubeats]

I think he said something like "Durante mias ultims trenta ans", which of course is still very similar to Portuguese.

[@makky6239]

@@Jljujubeats he said in portuguese

[@lolarun4328]

the language sound like german meet french meet italian meet portuguese, really beautiful

[@daniy1426]

I'm a Native Portuguese speaker and to me its sound like a Portuguese dialect with some Italian and french!! "Meu nome", "durante meus ultim's trin't an's eu vendi" etc.. its just like Portuguese language with a tick Lisbon's accent that suppress too some vowels, I really was not aware of that similarity. Languages are fantastic!!

[@orestestrivellas3153]

Romansh is NOWHERE near the closest relative to latin. That goes either to Romanian, Italian or most notably sardinian

[@orestestrivellas3153]

Kevin Johansson ShockD since when did linguistics degenerate into insult? Romanian preserved the latin Declention system and many archaic features.

[@orestestrivellas3153]

ShockD So? They're also orthodox christians. Does that make their language any different?

[@orestestrivellas3153]

ShockD So languages didn't work before writing was invented? what are you trying to say? The used the Cyrillic alphabet because it was given to them by the Orthodox church as a Liturgical script.

[@orestestrivellas3153]

ShockD Obviously not in the Romanian language, as it is observable in its present state and quite conservative grammar-wise

[@leotato56]

Orestes Nicopoulos Romanian is the language of Rumania and it has nothing to do, the Romansh language together with Ladin and Friulan forms the Rathoromansh Family spoken in Italy and Switzerland.

[@vincentchevrier8660]

Im a french speaking Swiss i never new it sounded so beautiful

[@wagnersantos8774]

0:51-0:52 I'm Brazilian and I understood exactly what he said here, sounded just like portuguese from Portugal.

[@mirandusings]

Romansch as the closest living relative to ancient Latin? In what way--morphology, syntax, vocabulary? I'm skeptical. Beautiful language, though, and thanks for uploading this vid to share it with the world!

[@DJ-zt8tk]

The romance language closest to Latin is Sardinian

[@mihanich]

i would say that romansh is actually most distant romance language from latin because i checked the swadesh list for romance languages and romansh seems like the most outstanding language of all the romance ones.

[@leotato56]

Mirandu Kan There's no mystery: it is because they are both Romance languages together with Ladin, Friulan, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, French, Occitan, Rumanian and Portuguese!

[@maksphoto78]

Romansh originates from the spoken Latin brought to the region by Roman soldiers, merchants, and officials following the conquest of the modern-day Grisons area by the Romans in 15 BC. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh_language

[@spoooderminlovesdolantrump4635]

I heard Romanian was the closest

[@user-ep4yk3td2u]

American here. Just found out I have romansh-speaking ancestors and relatives. This language is... Incredible? Crazy? Cool? It doesn't sound like anything else...

[@HelmutEvrard]

sounds like a mix of Italian and German

[@leotato56]

Helmut A. All the Romance dialects/languages of Southern Switzerland and Northern Italy (until La Spezia-Pèsaro geographical line) have Gallic-Italian sounds like ö ,ü, ä but they have NOTHING TO DO with German !!!!!!!!

[@user-mw7zq2bt5k]

Have nothing to do with german..

[@gabrielfm2073]

yes i have the same thinking, but with a bit of portuguese too, this can be because im brazilian

[@drobs87]

And some Brazilian Portuguese

[@Blahdnb]

Romanian and Italian.

[@gregorywhite9095]

I just love you Guido Ratti! I speak French and English plus a lot of German and I understood everything you said. I met a Romansch speaker in NYC many years ago and find this language fascinating.

[@joaoguerreiro5717]

I'm in love with this language. It's so beautiful. I can understand almost everything. Especially because I am portuguese and our sounds are very similar :)

[@Andre-mj3pn]

Não deixem esta linda língua romântica desaparecer, ainda que pouco conhecida como o Catalão, Ocitano, Gascão, Piemontes, Provençal e Romeno é Belíssima de mais para se perder!

[@ronmaz7885]

"these people speak a language similar to Romanian, with many common words and expressions, have many similar toponyms, for example “CARP” that is actually the root of the word Carpathian, the name of the main mountain chain in Romania as well as a so called “free” Dacian tribe name that hasn't been conquered by the Romans. They also have many similar superstitions, customs, traditions, and foods. Falera, one of the Romansi Villages in the area has been attested as dating to 3500 B.C. and according to the locals many of their traditions have been inherited from their ancestors." Our Brothers From the Alps, published in Formula As magazine (Number 688, 2005)

[@joaoalcantara6676]

As a Portuguese speaker, that sounds like a cross of Italian and German to me. Really beautiful.

[@pitzboechannel]

Hey guys. The closest thing to Latin that exists is Sardinian, for sure. While for Rumantsch, it’s part of a big family of languages that go from Switzerland, to northern Italy, to Friuli, to Kärnten (Austria), to little parts of Slovenia, to Istria. These are the Raeto Romance Languages. If you go to the Italian Dolomites, the Ladín language, very close language to Rumantsch, is spoken and written everywhere. A little east, in Friuli, people speak a bizarre language that sounds like a cross between Venetian, Latin and Slavic languages: it’s the Friulan language, and it’s an official language there. In Istria you can find, apart from Italian, Istroromanian and Croatian and the Venetian dialects and the Croatian dialects (I think there may be some Slovenian dialects there too but I’m not Istrian, so I’m not sure), you’ll find the ancient Istriot language, which is a sister language to Rumantsch.

[@omfgsjoc]

It sounds like a mixture of French, Italian and German. As someone with a french background, I was able to understand most of what was said. Just like how I can understand a bit of Italian and Spanish. Such an interesting language.

[@justinspainard]

As a Euro Latin that speaks very romantic lol On the same way the language of Romania has a Latin/Slavic influence, Same goes with Romansh in Switzerland, but in this case it happens to have Germanic/Saxon influence, like French. All Latín/Romance language are unique, as an example Malta linguistic culture has it more of a Latin/arabic mix, the Maltese language has way more arabic influence that the Portuguese, Italy’s; Sicilian, Spain’s; Castilian, Catalonian, and of course Andalusia which is the southern part of Spain with a lot of Arab culture history in it. But In my opinion Romansh sounds like a mix of Portuguese/Italian with German accent similar case with Romanian sounding in Slavic accent. 🇨🇭🇻🇦 🇪🇸 🇮🇹 🇦🇩 🇫🇷 🇵🇹 🇷🇴 EuroLatino que habla Románico lol

[@CristiNeagu]

Being a Romanian, this sounds a lot like Romanian to me. There are some very similar words.

[@goytabr]

What a gracious language! So sweet and melodic!

[@severalmalfunctions]

I could actually understand some of the things we was saying and I'm from Portugal

[@mauriciodarocha]

I could pick up some words too, and I am from Brazil.

[@leotato56]

severalmalfunctions There's no mystery: it is because they are both Romance languages together with Ladin, Friulan, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, French, Occitan, Rumanian and Portuguese!

[@luketurechek6867]

+Ettore Tangorra Are you just copying and pasting the same thing over and over again to carpet bomb this thread? For f's sake .

[@ijansk]

Wow, I am native Spanish speaker and I could understand a little bit of what these people said but I never heard of this language before.

[@probert1996]

And I'm Brazilian and speak Portuguese. Icould understand circa 40 % of their speech

[@leotato56]

Lucas Santos There's no mystery: it is because they are both Romance languages together with Ladin, Friulan, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, French, Occitan, Rumanian and Portuguese!

[@RolandodellaValle]

@@probert1996 we have a lot of Portuguese people in the Romansh area, they understand it very well.

[@jcoro91]

I am a Catalan speaker and I could understand like 40% of what the older man said. Sounds beautiful! 😍

[@styphi]

beautiful language... it sounds like a mixture of italian and german

[@leotato56]

Styph There's no mystery: it is because they are both Romance languages together with Ladin, Friulan, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, French, Occitan, Rumanian and Portuguese! Like all the Northern Romance languages until La Spezia-Pèsaro geographical line in Italy, they have Gallic-French influences an sounds like ö, ü, ä but they have nothing to do in grammar with German!!!

[@RolandodellaValle]

@@leotato56 e neanche le parole. Non capisco dove questa gente sente qualcosa di tedesco. Concordo 100% con te!

[@luuchoo93]

I’m shocked at how much I was able to understand being a Spanish speaker. Amazing

[@francescocaiaffa5389]

Che bello da sentire ....lo trovo simile al ladino che ho ascoltato parlare in provincia di Belluno e Trento.....queste lingue romanze sono 1 grandissimo patrimonio umano e culturale da custodire.....

[@AlexCruceru]

I hear words that are familiar to my romanian, italian , spanish, some portuguese.Well from all latin languages :)

[@Ryan98063]

There is a strong Germanic element in the Language as well, so even English speakers with rudimentary German knowledge can understand some Romansch

[@georgipentschev5984]

Newfoundland and Labrador United Party The man spoke slow , I am pretty sure if you are between these people in casual situation - forget to understand anything :-)

[@Ryan98063]

My island speaks English, but since Canada annexed us in 1949, we now learn french in Schools which we never use. In grade 10, I taught myself German. So I'm somewhat trilingual, plus a little Czech and Swedish. I might be able to pick out a handfull of sentences or words, but no certainly the mutual intelligibility of English and Romansh must be less than 1-2%

[@ddmte]

I'm Portuguese, born in switzerland and I can say that there are really close sounds and words between Romansh and Portuguese.

[@leotato56]

ddmte There's no mystery: it is because they are both Romance languages together with Ladin, Friulan, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, French, Occitan, Rumanian and Portuguese!

[@allxtarmusic]

Man, I could almost understand everything, it sounded like they were speaking portuguese, it spooked me

[@brendarois]

OMG. This sounds like a mix of Portuguese, Italian and German. I want to learn Romansch!!!

[@RolandodellaValle]

There is no German, it is a neolatin language. But they are using some German loan words due to the Germanization

[@natashakershaw2929]

Switzerland is such an appealing country. I don't know why, but I've always found it a bit different from other countries.

[@N73B60]

It's a mix of german, portuguese, spanish, italian and french. I mean, any european should understand parts of this language.

[@slaveNo-4028]

im german and know english, latin, some french, i understand swiss german very well BUT i understand barely anything from the parts they are talking... i was wondering that too, especialy since he said it came closest to ancient latin

[@Derdadortiwo]

it developed from the raetian language mixed with latin and then later also some german french and italian were sprinkled in through trade

[@TheAnarchistBeekeeper]

Derdadortiwo No you're wrong, the vulgar latin of that area was influenced by the ancient Celtic and medieval Germanic language and that's why it's really close to the languages of northern Italy, raetian was spoken in a different area (ancient Swiss and raetian people living in Switzerland were speaking Celtic) and has gone extinct during Roman times..

[@yooki198]

thanks for this video. i just heard about this language for the first time today as I was chatting with a Swiss woman..what a wonderful world we live in. always something new to explore!

[@alanoken3097]

I speak German and all the Romance languages (except Romanian). I could understand the older gentleman perfectly but had to look at the subtitles to understand the young man fully. The older gentleman sounded as if he were speaking an Italian dialect of some sort while the younger man’s speech sounded much more like a German dialect.

[@bernardofn]

I speak Portuguese and could understand a lot! Interesting!

[@manualvarado2212]

0:52 that sounded a lot like catalan! Thank you so much for the video, i had been quite curious about Romansh

[@sergiantonisilvaylerin6592]

Mia olma senta ferm, Mia olma senta ferm Dieu en tschiel, Il bab etern, Dieu en tschiel, il bab etern. (himne de 🇨🇭)... No cal traduiro, s'entén veritat?... Bueno, BAB=PARE... ;)

[@matthewmabasa3331]

This should be the official language of Switzerland 🇨🇭, who agree 👍🏻?

[@vanessamargelisch8187]

It is ;) we have 4 official languages

[@rapanuiorion9784]

Nice video .Thats true. I could see a lot of similarities to Portuguese. I'm Brazilian,so I speak Portuguese and a lot of the setences they've said I was able to understand. Even the way they introduce themselves is similar to the way we say it: "Meu nome é..."

[@LoveoneAn]

Loved this video, very awesome to hear a native speaker say his own words and be heard :). Hopefully all five dialects can be preserved.

[@JPCDC425]

Thanks for this fascinating look at this language. As a former Latin student, I was actually able to follow some of that. It's amazing to see how expands to meet new concepts

[@feilipei-movie]

That's so fascinating because I've never tried to study romansh but I still can understand most what they say!

[@hindsighter]

A beautiful language. Sounds like a mixture of Italian and Schwizerdütsch. I hope it's kept alive for ever.

[@juandiegoprado]

This is a great example of now rare languages that formed in the fringes of regions with more dominant languages. Kind of like how if you travel North along the coast starting in Valencia and ending in Liguria, you could see how the language progressively changes from Valencian (although this is more of a dialect) to Catalan, Occitan, and North Italian. Romansh had a lot of early Germanic influences on its vocabulary and some pronunciation, that’s why it sounds like a German trying to speak Italian a bit.

[@montelatici]

I am Italian mother tongue, and I can understand most of this language.

[@wisemonkeys4511]

Is like a mix of portuguese and german :D

[@leotato56]

Gabriel Barbosa Fronza There's no mystery: it is because they are both Romance languages together with Ladin, Friulan, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, French, Occitan, Rumanian and Portuguese! Like all the Northern Romance languages until La Spezia-Pèsaro geographical line in Italy, they have Gallic-French influences an sounds like ö, ü, ä but they have nothing to do in grammar with German!!!

[@duriluzi7599]

I actually come from the engadin, down the special is, everything you hear, sounds in each village different kinda, every village has his own romansh

[@larissaroberts4510]

I am tutoring a student aged 11 and we have just discovered that Romansch is an official language in Switzerland. We have been 'mind blown' said my student :)

[@gc8596]

beautiful language! I am of swiss background, my last name is the swiss part actually, i'm dying to learn more of this culture!

[@teddyholcomb4768]

I took Latin in high school and understood a lot of what he said, it really does sound more like Latin than any other Romance language, even Italian

[@jorgetojo]

there is a few worlds that is exactly like portuguese...

[@EngPinto]

close enough... its more like catalan

[@EngPinto]

***** I don't get it. Vergonha?

[@leotato56]

Jon Jones There's no mystery: it is because they are both Romance languages together with Ladin, Friulan, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, French, Occitan, Rumanian and Portuguese! Like all the Northern Romance languages until La Spezia-Pèsaro geographical line in Italy, they have Gallic-French influences an sounds like ö, ü, ä but they have nothing to do in grammar with German!!!

[@leotato56]

Ricardo Pinto There's no mystery: it is because they are both Romance languages together with Ladin, Friulan, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, French, Occitan, Rumanian and Portuguese! Like all the Northern Romance languages until La Spezia-Pèsaro geographical line in Italy, they have Gallic-French influences an sounds like ö, ü, ä but they have nothing to do in grammar with German!!!

[@argiemerc]

Im a spanish speaker and could perfectly understand a few sentences from the older guy without any problem. Thats fascinating because its evidence about how closer vulgar latin already was to modern romance languages even by the time of the roman empire.

[@richardweil8813]

In New Zealand I heard a couple of women speaking English with lovely musical accents that I could not place. They were native Romansh speakers. It was fascinating to actually hear this rare language in use. Thanks for the video.

[@vincentcalabrese2068]

On what basis do you make the claim that Romansch is the "probably the closest living language to ancient Latin"? Though I'm no expert that seems false. Sardinian is usually judged to be the most conservative Romance language, and Romansch has extensive influence from German

[@lukefernandez7880]

Sounds like a mix of French, Italian, and German. Also sounds similar to Portuguese or Romanian. Cool. I'm Spanish and actually understood a little of what they said.

[@veloboy]

Such a beautiful and misunderstood language (by me in my teen years at least, when I was learning French). I get it now. There are similarities with Galician, Valenciano, Catalan, Occitan, Arpitan, Piedmontese, Rumanian, etc, etc! A key piece in the trans-continental dialect continuum puzzle!

[@justinspainard]

As a Euro Latin that speaks very romantic lol On the same way the language of Romania has a Latin/Slavic influence, Same goes with Romansh in Switzerland, but in this case it happens to have Germanic/Saxon influence, like French. All Latín/Romance language are unique, as an example Malta linguistic culture has it more of a Latin/arabic mix, the Maltese language has way more arabic influence that the Portuguese, Italy’s; Sicilian, Spain’s; Castilian, Catalonian, and of course Andalusia which is the southern part of Spain with a lot of Arab culture history in it. But In my opinion Romansh sounds like a mix of Portuguese/Italian with German accent similar case with Romanian sounding in Slavic accent. 🇨🇭🇻🇦 🇪🇸 🇮🇹 🇦🇩 🇫🇷 🇵🇹 🇷🇴

[@antoniovaccaro2160]

I actually heard, that Sardinian was the romance language being closest to Latin...🤔

[@alechinshaw5990]

You’d be right

[@davdan9103]

I speak fluent Spanish, nearly fluent French and conversational Italian and Portuguese, and watching this I felt like I could have made out what he was saying had the subtitles not been there

[@alissoncordeiro5500]

It looks like Italian + French and a little Portuguese! Essa língua ainda lavou aprender. Amo línguas românicas!

[@tstokemb]

Sounds like a mixture of Portuguese and Italian to me.

[@kevinelruler]

As a Spanish speaker, I was able to understand very, very little of what they said. Maybe 10% at most.

[@abdullaibrahim6033]

Beautiful Language with beautiful melody. really romantic

[@jLjtremblay]

And this francophone says, "Quoi?" Fascinant! Apart from sounding Latin-like, it’s all Greek to me. Maybe I haven’t had enough coffee yet this morning? Thanks for the video!

[@adelissahunsley]

This is so cool! I am a casual student of Latin on duolingo and one of my disappointments is since it is a dead language, it is harder to find someone to practice with, and this being the closest active language to Latin, I think it would be really fun to learn.

[@semper9565]

I am Romanian French and English teacher who studied German too. I understood every word. For me it' s like a mix of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

[@LoveoneAn]

It's a really pleasant sounding language. Agree that it sounds like Germanized Italian but keep in mind that there a 5 different dialects that are different enough from each other that speakers of different dialects very often communicate in German. This one might be more Germanized than others.

[@meinkopf3855]

Hahahah every romance language claims to be thw closest to Latin hahaha... it doesn't matter though. I loved this beautiful language. Peace and love from Spain.

[@andienicborges]

Is similiar to portuguese also!

[@Heimrik01]

+Wanderson Borges I would rather say it's close to catalan

[@justmegumi34]

“Romansh probably the closest living language to ancient latin” Italian:Am i a joke to u?

[@propriono]

It is very similar to italian. Guido ratti is actually an italian name.

[@Bringmeoneofthosechickens]

Guido ratti translates to Fat Rat in Italian

[@Tank20138Gaming]

+propriono also sounds a bit like swiss german as well

[@sirijaw]

It's not similar to Italian. I'm from Switzerland and I speak french, German and I actually study swiss-german and Italian. This is absolutely not similar XD

[@Rostov_V]

It's similar to Italian(or some Italian dialects), because is a latin language... it's definitely closer to Catalan or Portuguese! I'm Italian, but I speak Català/Valencia.

[@Decebal1906]

Obviously the debate about "which language is closest to Latin" gets muddied, because people mix up Classical Latin (the standardized form not used in everyday contexts) with Vulgar Latin (any of a very large variety of forms of spoken Latin) and Proto-Romance (the hypothetical language from which all modern Romance languages are descended, and only one form of Vulgar Latin). That said, when considering which modern Romance language is "closest" to Proto-Romance, one should look at phonology, morphology, and syntax; not the lexicon, because having more Latin words does not make a language somehow genetically more closely related to Latin (e.g. English). So, first phonology: closest modern language is Sardinian, which has preserved a variety of features (for example, no change in vowels [i] and [u]; [k] and [g] don't change before front vowels). Second, morphology: Romanian, which is the only Romance language to have case inflections on nouns (though the system is, nonetheless, simplified from Proto-Romance's already simplified case system). Third, syntax: every modern Romance language has undergone extensive syntactic change due to the loss of the case system. No modern Romance language is scrambling, all are fairly strictly right-branching (unlike Latin's mixed right- and left-branching constructions), etc. Ultimately, setting aside differences in phonology and lexicon, all modern Romance languages are far more similar to each other than any of them are to "Latin," which makes this whole debate somewhat silly.

[@RodrigoCortezMA]

I speak portuguese and could understand a bit of what you 2 were saying. That's pretty awesome

[@dragodragon9031]

From a romanian speaker I understand 20 procent from what its talking about.... nice language

[@stefanalecu9532]

As a Romanian I literally only understood a few words from that.

[@stefanalecu9532]

I know, it's obvious from the title, maybe, just maybe, I am from Romania and can't actually understand anything from that?

[@Decebal1906]

Romansh is not a dialect of Italian language. Romanish is a language., indeed share some similarities with Romanian, Portuguese and Italian, but this doesnt mean that its a dialect of those 3. ,,Obviously the debate about "which language is closest to Latin" gets muddied, because people mix up Classical Latin (the standardized form not used in everyday contexts) with Vulgar Latin (any of a very large variety of forms of spoken Latin) and Proto-Romance (the hypothetical language from which all modern Romance languages are descended, and only one form of Vulgar Latin). That said, when considering which modern Romance language is "closest" to Proto-Romance, one should look at phonology, morphology, and syntax; not the lexicon, because having more Latin words does not make a language somehow genetically more closely related to Latin (e.g. English). So, first phonology: closest modern language is Sardinian, which has preserved a variety of features (for example, no change in vowels [i] and [u]; [k] and [g] don't change before front vowels). Second, morphology: Romanian, which is the only Romance language to have case inflections on nouns (though the system is, nonetheless, simplified from Proto-Romance's already simplified case system). Third, syntax: every modern Romance language has undergone extensive syntactic change due to the loss of the case system. No modern Romance language is scrambling, all are fairly strictly right-branching (unlike Latin's mixed right- and left-branching constructions), etc. Ultimately, setting aside differences in phonology and lexicon, all modern Romance languages are far more similar to each other than any of them are to "Latin," which makes this whole debate somewhat silly."

[@samadali563]

Wow this is a strange cross between Italian, German and Portuguese! What a beautiful language!

[@mickeyamf]

that second guy featured is so adorable he looks like an evil business guy from a movie

[@werneralexandercastilloago123]

Yo hablo italiano, español, medio Frances y poco portugues! Y en verdad cuando visite esa parte de suiza me gusto mucho el idioma, casi que lo entiendo todo! Ahora me gustaria aprenderlo!❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@DavidRinkevich]

Please correct me if I'm wrong (most likely) but could Romansh be a hint of how Germans might've spoke if they were conquered by the Romans?

[@TheAnarchistBeekeeper]

The phonology was influenced by ancient Celtic languages so this is how the Celts sounded when speaking vulgar latin..(of course it was also influenced by German)

[@TheAnarchistBeekeeper]

Ragnar Pallebasse Ahahah it's impossible, rhaetic was close to Etruscan (non indoeuropean language) while Romansh is a romance (indoeuropean) language really close to northern italian languages (which are influenced by celtic), the ancient Swiss rhaetic people spoked Celtic and stopped to speak rhaetic once they came to live there..

[@zabag]

I speak Italian and Portuguese and I understood about 90% of what he said.

[@TheArgumento1986]

I am Portuguese and I could understand some words like "meu nome", "contente", "línguas", "durante os últimos trinta anos", "no inverno com a neve".

[@KeillaSellay]

As a Romanian, I could understand some words, but none of the phrases. Words like lingua, terra, fina, pensionar. But I could not understand anything. I never lived in Italy, but I watch Italian movies without subtitles. I can easily understand like 70% of Italians easily. But this Romansh, it sounds soo strange to me. Like a German trying to speak Portuguese and Italian. The language definitely feels ancient to me. Exotic.

[@maxkho00]

This just sounds Portuguese. If no one had told me, I would be convinced that this guy is from Portugal.

[@Divocwax]

Sounded quite familiar to me. Only because I had the subtitles to match with the sounds I expect. Flowers is Flora, so how is that surprising? It's still called Flora in science in English, when we talk about flora and fauna. So many English words have Latin origin. Without the subtitles, it sounds like some of today's Western European languages.

[@gullf1sk]

As a norwegian, i can get by in all of scandinavia speaking norwegian, although slowly at times. Is it the same for the latin gang down south?

[@roman-brasilero8685]

As a romanian I understood alot what he said...

[@gunnarcaguenssen]

I speak spanish and understood a lot to the old guy. Many different things here and there. He said f.ex: "Bella flora" meaning beautiful flowers. In spanish is very close: "Bellas flores". And fonetically very similar too.

[@JLVN010]

Wauw what a beautiful language!! Sounds like mix of Germanic and Latin languages.

[@bernd_the_almighty]

Yeah sounds like Portuguese/German mix.

[@Dm2106]

Actually, the closest living language to Latin is Sardo/Sardinian. Romansch pronunciation has also become very Germanized. But I agree with you that it is a neat language. Thanks for posting.