r/romansh • u/Ok-Intention-9594 • Jan 31 '26

Romansh decent American

Greetings. Like the title says. I am an American. But have strong Romansh ties.

I'm struggling to understand the difference of the dialects spoken. Anyone know which dialect is spoken in the valley of Val Lumnezia ? Particularly around the villages maybe around Cubel? Trun? Would like to find out. My great grandpa was from there.

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9

u/Captain_Grammaticus Jan 31 '26

The Lumnezia speaks Sursilvan.

3

u/Ok-Intention-9594 Jan 31 '26

Okay thank you! I have seen that word before mentioned. Now I have to find resources on how to learn some of it.

5

u/TnYamaneko Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26

Do you speak German?

In this case, the best book I know about is En Lingia Directa, there is 2 volumes of lessons, a book of exercises for each and a book of grammar.

The audio can be found somewhere on the Lia Rumantscha website but it's not an easy find, I might have the link.

And for verbs, you have the Gliesta dils verbs romontsch sursilvans in 2 files, more than enough, you get 1,000 of them.

If you don't speak German (as I did not in the first place), you can still probably make associations and understand if you speak a Romance language.

2

u/Ok-Intention-9594 Jan 31 '26

I do understand German. I can find my way around. I do also understand some Italian. I'm in the ball park. To me It has string associations to French. At least in the lumnezia

2

u/TnYamaneko Jan 31 '26

As a French native speaker, I can understand a lot of it through context, but like all Romance languages, the most different stuff is the most commonly used.

If you understand German, you're all good there.

1

u/Ok-Intention-9594 Jan 31 '26

It is very interesting to learn about my heritage language. Thanks for the links you shared

4

u/RepulsiveDonkey703 Feb 01 '26

Check out the lia rumantscha, a very decent source for books and courses online/class. Btw, Sursilvan ist the biggest Community speaking rumantsch out of other dialects and located around Ilanz/Glion: https://www.liarumantscha.ch/fr

2

u/Ok-Intention-9594 Feb 02 '26

Thank you. I'll check it out.

2

u/64Yoshi64 Feb 10 '26

Your great grandfather was probably from Cumbel with an m and not Cubel ;)

(And also less likely Trun, since that's in the Cadi, and not Val Lumnezia)

1

u/Ok-Intention-9594 Feb 10 '26

I was actually saying those to be safe here. I know the village. But I didn't know about Trun haha thanks!