Romansh language 17th century, after which it became entirely German-speaking because of the Counter-Reformation denunciation of Romansh as a "Protestant language". When Grisons became part of Switzerland in 1803, it had a population of roughly 73,000, of whom around 36,600 were Romansh speakers—many of them monolingual—living mostly within the Romansh-speaking valleys. The language border with German, which had mostly been stable since the 16th century, now began moving again as more and more villages shifted to German. One cause was the admission of Grisons as a Swiss canton, which brought Romansh-speakers into more frequent contact with German-speakers. Another factor was the increased
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