Romansh people language for the first time as one of Switzerland's four national languages, though only for use within the canton, not at the federal level. The Romansh people appeared to be mostly satisfied with this status until the 1980s when debate arose over Switzerland's relationship with the greater European continent and the concept of the European Union began to form. The Romansh people advocated heavily for Switzerland's membership in the Union, but the referendum to join it was narrowly defeated in 1992 by the German majority and Switzerland remained a nation apart with the Romansh people a nation apart within it
Romansh language translation of German 'einen Korb geben', literally meaning 'to hand a basket', but used in the sense of 'turning down a marriage proposal' or "esser ligiongia ad enzatgi", a loan translation of the German expression "jemandem Wurst sein", literally meaning 'to be sausage to someone' but meaning 'not cared about, to be unimportant'. Apart from vocabulary, the influence of German is noticeable in grammatical constructions, which are sometimes closer to German than to other Romance languages. For instance, Romansh is the only Romance language in which indirect speech is formed using the subjunctive mood, as in Sursilvan "El di ch'el