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 means that any citizen of the canton may request service and official documents such as ballots in their language of choice, that all three languages may be used in court, and that a member of the cantonal parliament is free to use any of the three languages. Since 1991, all official texts of the cantonal parliament must be translated into Romansh and offices of the cantonal government must include signage in all three languages. In practice, the role of Romansh within the cantonal administration is limited and often symbolic and the working language is mainly German. This is usually justified