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Minority Languages Endangered

The human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, issued a series of recommendations, mainly to promote Romansh as a living language and protect Yenish, spoken by a few thousand gypsies. Despite making some progress, they say Switzerland must do more to strengthen minority languages spoken in the country.

The Council of Europe applauded moves by the federal government to extend the broadcasting time of public radio and television programmes in Romansh, but it said other obstacles remained. It urged significant measures to ensure the use of Romansh in courts, in dealings with the cantonal administration and in parliamentary debates, and to improve the introduction of the standardised version of Romansh in schools "in a way that has a positive impact on its protection and promotion as a living language.”

Regarding Yenish, the Council regretted that Switzerland, which signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 1993, had still not recognised Yenish as such. Although they focused their recommendations on Switzerland's Yenish and Romansh populations, it also investigated cases where French, German and Italian are in a minority language situation.