Can the Maori language survive? Readers who have asked themselves this question will be interested to see how an old language still spoken in the mountains of part of Switzerland has been kept alive by the joint efforts of people and government. This article was first suggested by one of our subscribers. Mr K. J. Hesz, who gave us much useful information. This was later supplemented by the Department of Education in Chur, Switzerland, and a private government-assisted organization, the Romantsch League. It will be seen that these people, although geographically far removed from us, are facing problems very similar to our own. MANY peoples in the world are very similarly placed to the Maori. Forming a small part of a larger nation they have to fit in and yet long to hold on to their own culture and language. One such people are the Rhaetians or Romantsch of Switzerland, mostly farming people living in the secluded valleys of the mountainous Grisons County. It is here that some of the world's finest tourist resorts and skiing grounds are found. The people are of an ancient race, the original inhabitants of Switzerland whose language, Romantsch is of all living tongues the closest to Latin. The Rhaetian race was conquered by the Romans fifteen years before the birth of Jesus Christ. By the time the Roman Empire collapsed these Rhaetians had for centuries supplied one of the most famous legions and were thoroughly Romanized. According to tradition, soldiers of the Rhaetian Legion crucified Jesus Christ in Jerusalem; as a conciliatory reparation for that crime, the Rhaetians supply the Papal Swiss Guard with new members. Later the Germans began to encroach on their territory, occupying the more accessible parts of Switzerland. The Rhaetians lost their identity, with the exception of those in the mountain fastnesses of Grisons in the South. These alone continued to speak the old Roman tongue, which they called Romantsch. Today, of 137,000 inhabitants in the Grisons County, 50,000 are classified as Romantsch. For centuries, the Swiss central government did not take any notice of the ‘peasant language’ of these isolated mountain dwellers, while German, French and Italian were recognised as the national languages.

Useless Peasant Tongue? Nonetheless, Romantsch survived quite easily until the nineteenth century, when the greatly increased tourist trade, coupled with the entry of