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 spoken in Chur roughly a hundred years before, but had since then rapidly given way to German and was now not much appreciated by the inhabitants of the city. Many linguists regard the loss of Chur to German as a crucial event. According to Sylvia Osswald, for example, it occurred precisely at a time when the introduction of the printing press could have led to the adoption of the Romansh dialect of the capital as a common written language for all Romansh speakers. Other linguists such as Jachen Curdin Arquint remain skeptical of this view, however, and assume that the