Rhaeto-Romance Swisterland?

Vitruvius

Donor
Exactly. Perhaps Swiss nationalism goes to a level not seen OTL and in order to assert its difference from any German state (plus Austria-Hungary), uses Romansh as the administrative language and the language instructed in school in order to unify the French, Italian, and German Swiss. The closest parallel I can think of is that when the Kingdom of Sardinia, it used the Tuscan dialect of Italian in its government and schooling and that's how we got "Standard Italian".

The problem is that there is was no standard Romansh for most of its history and the dialect communities are extraordinarily small, sometimes amount to single mountain valleys. Grisons Romansh was created in the late 20th century as a standardized form of the various Romansh dialects in order to enable its use as the 4th federal language. I believe many Romansh speakers choose not to avail themselves of government communications in Romansh because they don't speak/can't read the standardized form or view it as an artificial construct. Where as they are almost all bilingual in German so when interacting outside their dialect community many may simply use German rather than Grisons Romansh.

Hence you need a POD much further back that would establish a prestige dialect of Romansh that can then evolve into a standardized form. That standardized form of Romansh would then have to gain some kind of importance/credibility as a language of commerce/literature/government vis a vis French, Italian and German. Then from there Romansh could be adopted as an administrative language in multilingual Switzerland. And from there it could slowly permeate society through the government/schools/media and slowly gain usage among the general population much as standard(tuscan) Italian. So there's really several more steps involved than in the Italian analogy. Still possible but the POD to set things in motion needs to be well before the 19th century.
 
dream of romansch

I had a dream in which Italy invaded Switzerland. France then annexed the French speaking part, and Germany annexed the rest, except for Grischun and the the part bordering Liechtenstein. Germany also annexed Austria with the exception of Tyrol and Voralberg. The rump Switzerland then united with the rump Austria. Fearing that they would also be annexed, greater Grischun made Romansch into the official language. There were other border asjustments. Grischun took Friulia and
Trieste from Italy. As compensation, Italy took Nice and Savoy.
The only timeline I could think of for this to happen would be a post Hitler Third Reich successor state, aligned with a post fascist Italy and a Vichy type France.
 
I had a dream in which Italy invaded Switzerland. France then annexed the French speaking part, and Germany annexed the rest, except for Grischun and the the part bordering Liechtenstein. Germany also annexed Austria with the exception of Tyrol and Voralberg. The rump Switzerland then united with the rump Austria. Fearing that they would also be annexed, greater Grischun made Romansch into the official language. There were other border asjustments. Grischun took Friulia and
Trieste from Italy. As compensation, Italy took Nice and Savoy.
The only timeline I could think of for this to happen would be a post Hitler Third Reich successor state, aligned with a post fascist Italy and a Vichy type France.

I'm not sure any premodern state would even pour massive ressources into conquering 'a few cantons of uppity mountain folk'... They don't have massive ressources worth a bloody guerrila war..
 
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