Romansh

Romansh (also spelled Rumantsch, Romansch or Romanche) is one of the four national languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian and French. It is one of the Rhaeto-Romance languages, believed to have descended from the Vulgar Latin variety spoken by Roman era occupiers of the region, and, as such, somewhat resembles Italian, French and Spanish. As of the 2000 Swiss Census, it is spoken by 35,096 residents of the canton of Graubünden (Grisons) as the language of "best command", and 60,815 in the "best command" plus "most spoken" categories. Spoken now by around 0.9% of Switzerland's 7.5 million inhabitants, it is Switzerland's least-used national language in terms of number of speakers, and half as popular as Switzerland's most-used non-official language (Serbo-Croatian, with some 101,450 speakers).