Romansh language Grisons, the language borders largely stabilized in the 16th century and remained almost unchanged until the 19th century. This language area is often called the "Traditional Romansh-speaking territory", a term introduced by the statistician Jean-Jacques Furer based on the results of the Swiss censuses. Furer defines this language area as those municipalities in which a majority declared Romansh as their mother tongue in any of the first four Swiss censuses between 1860 and 1888. In addition, he includes Fürstenau. This represented 121 municipalities at the time, corresponding to 116 present-day municipalities. The villages of Samnaun, Sils im Domleschg, Masein, and
Romansh language or , as seen in Latin "muru(m)" ("wall"), which is or in Romansh. The main features distinguishing Romansh from the Gallo-Italic languages to the south, and placing it closer to French, are: Another defining feature of the Romansh language is the use of unstressed vowels. All unstressed vowels (except /a/) disappeared. Whether or not Romansh, Friulan and Ladin should compose a separate "Rhaeto-Romance" subgroup within Gallo-Romance is an unresolved issue, known as the "Questione ladina". Some linguists posit that these languages are descended from a common language, which was fractured geographically through the spread of German and Italian. The Italian