Romansh language languages" and "official languages". The status of a national language was largely symbolic, whereas only official languages were to be used in official documents, a status reserved for German, French, and Italian. The recognition of Romansh as the fourth national language is best seen within the context of the "Spiritual defence" preceding World War II, which aimed to underline the special status of Switzerland as a multinational country. Additionally, this was supposed to discredit the efforts of Italian nationalists to claim Romansh as a dialect of Italian and establish a claim to parts of Grisons. The Romansh language movement led
Romansh language Friulan and Ladin were not separate languages but rather Italian dialects. They used this as an argument to claim the territories for Italy where these languages were spoken. From a sociolinguistic perspective, however, this question is largely irrelevant. The speakers of Romansh have always identified as speaking a language distinct from both Italian and other Romance varieties. Romansh comprises a group of closely related dialects, which are most commonly divided into five different varieties, each of which has developed a standardized form. These standardized regional standards are referred to as "idioms" in Romansh to distinguish them from the local vernaculars,