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 is a person or an animal, with "a", as in "test vis a Peider?" "did you see Peter?", "eau d'he mno a spass al chaun" "I took the dog out for a walk", but "hest vis la baselgia?" "did you see the church?". No systematic synchronic description of Romansh vocabulary has been carried out so far. Existing studies usually approach the subject from a historical perspective, taking particular interest in pre-Roman substratum, archaic words preserved only in Romansh, or in loan words from German. A project to compile together all known historic and modern Romansh vocabulary is the Dicziunari Rumantsch