From: dgay@di.epfl.ch (David Gay)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.europe
Subject: Re: Five Swiss languages
Date: 28 Dec 92 20:38:04 GMT
	<1992Dec21.140921.1@cc.helsinki.fi> <sorokin.27@ps1.iaee.tuwien.ac.at>
	<1992Dec22.090407.1@cc.helsinki.fi>
	<PFEIFFER.92Dec22100213@cix.cict.fr>
Followup-To: soc.culture.soviet
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
In-reply-to: pfeiffer@cict.fr's message of 22 Dec 92 10:02:13 GMT

pfeiffer@cict.fr (Daniel Pfeiffer) writes:
   In article <1992Dec22.090407.1@cc.helsinki.fi> thietaniemi@cc.helsinki.fi writes:
   > Four, if you add Rheto-Rhumainian (Reto-Romania). But it's judicial status
   > might be different.

   This language is strongly protected, but slowly losing ground, because
   there are no major towns or industry in its area.  But there are
   actually five languages, if you count Franco-Provencal (Romand).  This
   language, close to Occitanian of southern France, which is also spoken
   in southern Burgundy, southern half of Franche-Comte, most of
   Rhone-Alpes including Savoy and the Italian Valle-d'Aosta was branded
   by Paris as a ``Patois'', a miserable dialect of French (which is
   linguistically wrong), a blemish to get rid of!  And the Romand cantons
   fell for this and taught pure Paris French in their schools.

And in 20 years here I have never heard anybody speak it. Have you got any 
references to suggest that the "Suisse Romande" ever spoke what could be called
ome language ? And that a conscious decision was taken to throw it out in favour 
of "Paris French" ?

   Nowadays this language, which was the second by population in
   Switzerland, is close to death, although some theatre and such
   activity persists.

Hmmph. The only bit of Geneva patois I've seen is a song commemorating
the defeat of the Savoyards in 1602. Any activity is so negligible as to be
invisible.

   > Besides, German was never a language of "oppressors" in Switzerland.
   > In Bern German was spoken from the very beginning. The same goes to French
   > in cantons like Valais/Wallis.

   Switzerland was not always the peaceful country it is since 1848, and
   its agressions and extensions against neighbours often benefitted the
   German (or Alemanic) speakers.

You would be hard pressed to sustain this view:
a) Most of Switzerland is (Swiss-)German speaking, hence it is fairly
obvious that other German-speaking entities lost out there (eg the Austrians).
b) Several of the French-speaking cantons used to depend on the German or
Austrian empires.
c) From 1515 to 1798, Switzerland didn't take part in any European wars. A map 
of Switzerland (and allied regions) of 1515 isn't very different from now.

If you want to find a 5th language in Switzerland, you'll have much better
luck considering Swiss-German, a set of dialects spoken all over Swiss-Germany
(surprise, surprise). It is fairly lively (eg more and more programs use it
on television), and sufficiently different from German to be incomprehensible
(at least for people who don't speak German well like me).

David Gay
dgay@di.epfl.ch
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland
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